While comparative effectiveness research in the United States is booming thanks to the stimulus, a United Kingdom bastion of the discipline may be on the way out. Over at the NPR health blog, Joanne Silberner reports that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which publishes guidelines on treatments and medical devices based on their cost and effectiveness, could be gone by 2013.
At a drug industry trade group meeting in London earlier this week, Health Minister Lord Howe, Under Secretary of State for Quality, said NICE has become “redundant,” and that it should focus on setting quality standards rather than evaluating individual drugs.
Meanwhile, the Cameron administration has disregarded NICE advice on several cancer drugs, and Howe reports that the government is working on a new “value-based pricing system.”
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