A study by health economists at the University of York has, for the first time, produced an estimate of the impact on other NHS patients of new and more costly drugs and other treatments. This research suggests a refinement of the way the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence...

Healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face considerable population healthcare needs with markedly fewer resources than those in developed countries. The way in which available resources are allocated across competing priorities is crucial in affecting how much health is...

Context Until recently, purchasers’ options regarding whether to pay for the use of technologies have been binary in nature: a treatment is covered or not covered. However, policies have emerged which expand the options - for example, linking coverage to evidence development, an option...

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...

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...