NICE gateway - what NICE does
The information about what NICE does is arranged under the following headings:
NICE work programme
NICE's work programme includes a number of different products and activities which are described below.
Guidance – NICE produces the following types of guidance:
- clinical guidelines: these make recommendations on the appropriate treatment and care of people with specific diseases and conditions within the NHS
- health technologies: guidance on the use of new and existing medicines, treatments and procedures within the NHS
- interventional procedures: assessments of the safety and efficacy of (mainly) new procedures
- public health: guidance to NHS, local authorities and other organisations in the public, private, voluntary and community sectors in England on how to improve people's health and prevent illness and disease
- medical technologies: evaluation of innovative medical technologies (devices and diagnostics)
- diagnostic procedures: evaluation of innovative medical diagnostic technologies in order to ensure that the NHS is able to adopt clinically and cost effective technologies more rapidly and consistently
NICE Quality Standards and Social Care Standards: NICE quality standards are a concise set of statements designed to drive and measure priority quality improvements within a particular area of care. They are derived from the best available evidence such as NICE guidance and other evidence sources accredited by NICE.
Quality standards for social care focus on the services and interventions to support the social care needs of service users.
NHS Evidence: this is a search device that allows NHS staff to search the Internet for up-to-date evidence of effectiveness and examples of best practice in relation to health and social care.
Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF): NICE oversees the development of indicators used to show that GPs should be rewarded for providing good quality clinical care and for helping to improve people's health.
Commissioning Outcomes Framework (COF): this measures the health outcomes and quality of care (including patient reported outcome measures and patient experience) achieved by clinical commissioning groups.
Fellowship and Scholarship programme: this provides NHS health professionals, including nurses, opportunity to gain invaluable experience working with NICE.
Where NICE guidance applies
NICE guidance applies across the UK countries as follows:
- health technologies - medical technologies, diagnostic tools apply to England and Wales, and are reviewed locally in Scotland and Northern Ireland
- clinical guidelines and quality standards apply to England and Wales, and Northern Ireland under special arrangement
- interventional procedures apply to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
- public health guidance applies to England only.
NICE stakeholders
NICE consults the following when developing guidance:
- national organisations that represent the patients and carers described in a NICE guideline
- national organisations that represent health professionals directly providing those services described in the guideline
- manufacturers of technologies in the clinical area covered by the scope of the guideline
- primary care organisations and acute trusts, are selected at random and invited by NICE to participate in the development of a guideline
Topic selection
The Department of Health commissions NICE to develop guidance for the NHS. Nurses as with other stakeholders are encouraged to suggest topics for guidance development.
For further information on how guidance topics are chosen see the NICE website section on topic selection. For more detailed information on how NICE works and about each type of guidance see the NICE website section how we work.
What you can do
You can:
• suggest a topic through the NICE website at topic selection
• view the current NICE consultations
• get involved in NICE consultations
• read some stories from nurses who have been involved.
This page was last reviewed 9 April 2013.