National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

My right honourable friend the Minister of State (Jane Kennedy) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. Today I am pleased to announce the launch of the consultation on new proposals to update the topic selection process for National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's work programme. As NICE's role has changed in the past 12 months and the institute has taken on its new public health responsibilities, it is the right time to look at changes to the process of topic selection. Topic selection is a critical part of the process of producing guidance. Deciding what questions we want to ask NICE on the clinical and cost effectiveness of treatments is often a good deal harder than getting the answers and no less important. It is therefore vital that the mechanisms we have in place for the selection of topics produce the questions on issues of real priority to the NHS and in the public health arena. While the existing process has served well over the past four years, topic selection needs to keep with pace with changes in both the NHS and NICE. We need the process to be more responsive and have more NHS and public health representation to ensure the topics going to NICE are the ones where advice is most needed. At the same time, the selection of public health topics must also be fully integrated into the new process so any impact these topics might have on the institute's other work programmes can be identified. The consultation will begin on 6 March 2006 and ends on 9 June 2006. Copies of the consultation documents will be available in the Library and on the Department of Health website at www.dh.gov.uk/Consultations/LiveConsultations/LiveConsultationsArticle/fs/en?CONTENT–ID=4131055&chk=7xp%2Bnk. All comments on the consultation should be sent to responsesniceconsultation@dh.gsi.gov.uk.