Our client, a global company, asked Translucency to clarify the extent to which guidance issued by NICE in the UK was implemented and, where appropriate, the reasons it was not implemented.
We reviewed all NICE guidance to the date of the client’s request. We identified a number of dimensions of guidance (e.g. novel treatment, cost per patient, budget impact, numbers of patients involved, strength of evidence etc.) and confirmed these with a panel of clinical and managerial associates. We then scored each piece of guidance on these dimensions.
We obtained prescribing and purchasing data at payor level (then approximately 350 payors in England), and related the scores on the dimensions to the change in uptake following guidance being issued.
We carried out interviews with clinicians and managers to establish why, in a sample of cases, NICE guidance had not been implemented.
We used the data to predict, knowing how a product would score on the dimensions, the extent to which NICE guidance was likely to be implemented.
The client used the model in shaping its portfolio development strategy. The client has also used the model to assess, at an early stage in the product lifecycle, its likely performance in the UK market (whether or not it has been assessed by NICE). Model predictions have proved to be fairly accurate when applied to products subsequently assessed by NICE.