NICE guidelines

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom. It serves both the English NHS and the Welsh NHS. It was set up as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in 1999, and on 1 April 2005 joined with the Health Development Agency to become the new National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (still abbreviated as NICE). Following the Health and Social Care Act 2012, NICE was renamed the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on 1 April 2013 reflecting its new responsibilities for social care, and changed from a special health authority to an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body (ENDPB).

NICE publishes guidelines in four areas: the use of health technologies within the NHS (such as the use of new and existing medicines, treatments and procedures); clinical practice (guidance on the appropriate treatment and care of people with specific diseases and conditions); guidance for public sector workers on health promotion and ill-health avoidance; and guidance for social care services and users. These appraisals are based primarily on evaluations of efficacy and cost–effectiveness in various circumstances.

NICE was established in an attempt to end the so-called postcode lottery of healthcare in England and Wales, where treatments that were available depended upon the NHS Health Authority area in which the patient happened to live, but it has since acquired a high reputation internationally as a role model for the development of clinical guidelines. One aspect of this is the explicit determination of cost–benefit boundaries for certain technologies that it assesses. NICE also plays an important role in pioneering technology assessment in other healthcare systems through NICE International, established in May 2008 to help cultivate links with foreign governments.

The notion of an Institute to determine the clinical effectiveness of interventions first emerged at the end of John Major's Conservative Government as moves elsewhere were being made to set professionally agreed standards for clinical care. In 1996, the UK National Screening Committee (NSC) had been established by Sir Kenneth Calman and Muir Gray (now Sir Muir Gray) by the Policy Team led by Dr Tim Riley and latterly Sir Charles Nightingale for the Department of Health. The NSC aimed to ensure that evidence-based medicine informed policy making on what national screening programmes were approved for funding and what quality assurance mechanisms should be in place. This was a timely action as concerns over screening quality had emerged in breast cancer screening services came under question at Exeter in 1997 and followed in the wake of the 1995 Calman-Hine Report.

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