The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence will produce a stream of medical technology innovation briefings designed to boost their adoption throughout the health service.
Announcing the move at the NICE annual conference in Birmingham yesterday, its deputy chief executive Gillian Leng said the plan is to produce around 40 briefings on promising medical devices and diagnostics every year.
The briefings, she said, will outline new products and summarise information on the evidence of their clinical and cost effectiveness, as well as where in the service they could be used.
Much like its existing evidence summaries, whilst they will include input from experts NICE will make no judgement on their value.
According to Leng, the fact that the Institute is aiming to produce around 40 medtech briefings a year “reflects the scale of new innovations that are arriving”, but “adoption is still a challenge”.
Sir Bruce Keogh, national medical director at NHS England, said at the conference this week that it can still take up to 17 years from approval to get a new product established in the NHS.
A snap poll of delegates at conference showed that 50% believe the key barriers to adoption of new technologies in the NHS is a reluctance to change (50%), followed by expense (19%) and a lack of data – safety/efficacy concerns (12%).
