The aim of this 6-month project was to undertake a scoping study to provide recommendations for identifying NICE’s methodological research priorities and to establish an initial set of such priorities. Specifically the project had three main objectives: (i) To describe current processes by...

Osteoporosis is a major cause of morbidity, mortality and resource cost amongst the elderly population. Hip fracture is the most serious of the osteoporotic fractures, with approximately 10-20% of patients dying within six months of sustaining a fracture. Furthermore, hip fractures are the most...

NICE uses cost-effectiveness analysis to compare the health benefits expected to be gained by using a technology with the health that is likely to be forgone due to additional costs falling on the health care budget and displacing other activities that improve health. This approach to informing...

In a budget constrained healthcare system the decision to invest in strategies to improve the implementation of cost-effective technologies must be made alongside decisions regarding investment in the technologies themselves and investment in further research. This paper presents a single,...

An inappropriate structure for a decision analytic model can potentially invalidate estimates of cost-effectiveness and estimates of the value of further research. However, there are often a number of alternative and credible structural assumptions which can be made. Although it is common...

Decision making in health care involves two sets of related decisions: those concerning appropriate service provision on the basis of existing information; and those concerned with whether to fund additional research to reduce the uncertainty relating to the decision. Information acquisition is...

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a social decision making approach to evaluation can be generalised to interventions such as public health and national policies which have multiple objectives and impact on multiple constraints within and beyond the health sector. We demonstrate...

In December 2010, the Government launched its consultation on its plans to change the way medicines are priced in the UK. By 2014, a system of ‘value-based pricing’ (VBP) will replace the current Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS), which is a voluntary agreement between the...