Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has provided guidance to NICE on the evidence used to inform the criteria updates to its Highly Specialised Technology processes.

The Department has not issued any such guidance. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an independent body and is responsible for the methods and processes that it uses in the development of its guidance, including the criteria used to determine whether topics should be routed to the technology appraisal or highly specialised technologies programmes. NICE made changes to its health technology evaluation manual in January 2022 following a comprehensive review of its methods and processes, including public consultation. As part of these changes, the eligibility criteria for the highly specialised technologies programme were clarified to make them clearer and more predictable.