NICE’s clarification of its approach to perspective in response to letter by Brendbekken and Bhopal

Brendbekken and Bhopal1 ask if the growth of high cost gene therapies should motivate the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to reassess its reference case position of counting only health sector costs and health outcomes in its health technology assessments,23 and instead to consider wider societal impacts like patients’ and caregivers’ ability to return to work.We question whether rapid innovation of a particular type of health technology and anticipation of negative media coverage constitute an appropriate basis on which to fundamentally alter the way we value healthcare. Decisions on these matters should rest on whether there are robust methods for measuring and valuing outcomes, and a strong evidence base that can be used to create useful and usable guidance for the health system.We agree that debate around what types of costs and outcomes are counted in health technology assessments is important, which is why we undertook a…
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