Shortening the 17-year gap

Since it was founded, NICE has built a reputation as a trusted public body that provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care in England. NICE guidelines make evidence-based recommendations on a wide range of topics to improve health, and management of health and social care and support for adults and children. But what has been NICE’s role in shaping innovation over the past 20 years?

It could be argued that NICE has not played a significant role in accelerating the uptake of new innovations to date and that perhaps the organisation is too focussed on the assessment of new therapeutics rather than medical technologies and lacks the capacity to deal effectively with both. So why has NICE not been that successful in helping accelerate medtech innovation, and how it can champion innovation in this sector in the future? 

To better understand the current landscape, it’s important to look at the barriers standing in the way of medtech innovation. There is an often quoted saying in research circles that it takes ‘17 years to translate new knowledge into routine clinical practice’. And, looking back over the past two decades, the UK’s undoubted strength in life sciences research and innovation does not seem to be translated into the early uptake and spread of new medical technologies.