Focusing on what matters most to the NHS
For more than 25 years NICE has helped practitioners and commissioners get the best care to people, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.
Jonathan Benger
Chief medical officer, deputy chief executive and interim director of the centre for guidelines at NICE
But it now faces an unprecedented challenge: innovative treatments and technologies are emerging faster than ever, yet our capacity to assess them remains finite. Novel diagnostics, digital therapeutics, and groundbreaking medicines arrive at pace, while NHS resources stay constant and are often stretched.
The question we face is: how do we ensure the NHS gets guidance on what matters most?
A unified approach to prioritisation
Until recently, we prioritised guidance through several different methods of topic selection. We recognised that this could feel fragmented for stakeholders trying to understand our pipeline, and led to a lack of coordination in our guidance portfolio.
We have now integrated and unified these processes, by developing a new prioritisation framework and launching a single NICE-wide prioritisation board. This means we can produce guidance in a way that's more coordinated, transparent and efficient. It also makes it easier for stakeholders to understand NICE’s priorities, and plan ahead.
The prioritisation board, made up of senior members of NICE, drives our decision-making and maintains oversight of our guidance portfolio. It ensures the topics we select reflect national priorities for health and care, including NHS operational planning guidance and the government's major conditions strategy.
Supporting NHS transformation and the 10 Year Plan
This new approach directly supports the government's mission-led agenda for NHS transformation. As the NHS develops its 10 Year Plan, NICE's prioritisation ensures our guidance aligns with the health service's most pressing challenges - from reducing hospital backlogs to improving care quality and addressing workforce pressures.
Our prioritisation decisions are driven by an understanding of where we can make the greatest difference: areas with significant unmet clinical need, emerging technologies that could transform care pathways, conditions that disproportionately affect underserved communities, and innovations with major budgetary implications for commissioners.
An updated forward view: the topics we're prioritising in 2025 and 2026
As part of our new approach to prioritisation, each year we publish a forward view on our website. The forward view gives you a clear line of sight on guidance that may affect your service planning and commissioning decisions.
The newly refreshed version outlines the topics we have in development and our reasons for prioritising them. It is fully aligned with the priorities set out in the NHS 10 Year Plan and it anticipates the goals and aspirations of new Modern Service Frameworks.
Our priority areas for 2025 to 2026 include:
Mental health
Addressing significant unmet clinical need and long-standing workforce constraints. For example, we're prioritising guidance on digital therapeutics for common mental health conditions, which could help ease pressure on overstretched services whilst improving access for patients.
Early cancer detection and diagnosis
Focusing on new diagnostic technologies that could transform early identification across cancer types. With major budgetary implications and the potential to shift care upstream, this work directly supports efforts to reduce the backlog in cancer services.
Diabetes
Responding to continuing growth in prevalence, likelihood of undiagnosed groups experiencing health inequalities, and the emergence of new digital technologies for monitoring and management.
We're also prioritising musculoskeletal conditions (given their disease burden and impact on waiting lists), respiratory conditions (tackling health inequalities and service demand), and neurology (particularly new dementia treatments).
The forward view also describes emerging trends we've identified that may shape healthcare policy and our guidance over the next two to five years - helping you anticipate future developments.
What this means for you
This new approach offers several benefits for healthcare professionals and commissioners:
greater certainty about upcoming guidance, supporting service planning and investment decisions
better alignment between NICE priorities and local and national objectives
more coordinated guidance development across NICE programmes
clearer opportunities to engage with and influence our work.
Shaping our priorities
We're committed to ensuring our guidance meets the evolving needs of the health and care system. The development of our new prioritisation process and forward view marks an important step in that commitment - and your ongoing input will determine how well we succeed.
We continue to value your insights into frontline challenges and local health needs, and will use this to shape our prioritisation decisions.
We want to hear from commissioners and healthcare professionals about:
emerging technologies or treatments you're seeing in your area
gaps in current guidance that create uncertainty for service planning
topics where NICE guidance would support transformation of care pathways.
To discuss our prioritisation process, suggest topics for future consideration, or access early information about guidance in development, please contact topics@nice.org.uk