The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has inked a new collaborative agreement with not-for-profit organisation Cochrane to develop ‘living’ guideline recommendations.
Under the terms of the agreement, NICE will gain better use of Cochrane reviews in responding to changes in evidence, allowing the independent health body to make ‘efficient and effective’ updates to recommendations in its guideline portfolio.
The NHS has a ‘long-established’ relationship with Cochrane, received a large amount of its funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) – NICE already uses the organisation’s systemic reviews of health evidence to inform its guidelines.
Specifically, in NICE’s 2021 update of its guideline on ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage, Cochrane’s network meta-analysis of progestogens for preventing miscarriage were presented to the independent guideline committee.
According to NICE, this allowed the committee to efficiently make recommendations as it had early access to the ‘latest evidence’.
“I am delighted to have signed a collaborative agreement with Cochrane. Cochrane has a well-established reputation for producing high quality systematic reviews which take into account the very latest evidence,” said Gillian Leng, chief executive at NICE.
“This agreement will help us to increase efficiency across our guideline portfolio and will help to deliver tangible benefits for people using the health service as well as clinicians who will get earlier access to NICE’s recommendations,” she added.
“This agreement has collaborative benefits for all involved. NICE will get the findings of Cochrane Reviews to use in their deliberations, Cochrane groups will be able to respond by producing high priority reviews, and for Cochrane review authors, it guarantees impact,” commented Karla Soares-Weiser, editor in chief of the Cochrane Library.
“Ultimately, however, the beneficiaries will be people who need evidence to make decisions about their health or that of someone else, and this supports that happening in a timely way,” Soares-Weiser added.
