We’re bringing our guidance together by topic, so that it’s all in one place, clearer to understand and easier to access.
We expect that this will help increase the use of promising medicines and treatments in the NHS. This will lead to a more effective use of NHS resources, and better outcomes for patients.
Currently, we produce guidance products separately. As technology appraisals and guidelines.
Through this project, we’re looking to include our published technology appraisals guidance in our guidelines. So, you’ll be able to access all our guidance on a topic in one place.
This will mean:
- It’s easier for commissioners, practitioners and patients to access and decide on treatment options.
- Better adoption of promising new treatments across the NHS.
- It’s easier for you to achieve the best outcomes for patients whilst making the best use of NHS resources.
How we’re doing this
We’re adopting 2 approaches for the project:
- Rapidly including newly published technology appraisal guidance into our guidelines.
- Analysing and comparing all treatment options for a specific clinical area. This will ensure that the most clinically and cost effective options are recommended at each stage.
Next steps
We're carrying out a formal consultation on an interim methods and processes statement for this project. This statement sets out the general principles guiding the 2 approaches. It also includes details on how we will more closely align methods and processes between our 2 guidance producing centres for this project. The consultation launched on 5 February and will run for 9 weeks.
Following the consultation, we will pilot the interim methods and processes. We’ll then use lessons learned from the pilot to help develop our final methods, which we’ll also open for consultation.
First pilot topics
We've started work on our first approach, and are piloting the second approach with 2 guideline updates:
- type 2 diabetes in adults: management (medicines update)
- osteoporosis: risk assessment, treatment, and fragility fracture prevention.
We've selected these topics as pilots because:
- they have multiple treatment options within the care pathway
- clinical practice within them varies significantly.
As a result, we believe that analysing and comparing treatments in these topics will make a meaningful difference for patients, practitioners, commissioners and our industry partners.
Stakeholder engagement webinar
Sam Roberts, our chief executive, was joined by colleagues from the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation (CHTE) and the Centre for Guidelines to talk about the work we're currently doing as part of the project.