Nice Talks

In this episode, our guests reflect on 25 years of NICE, how the organisation has developed, the impact its had and how it will change to adapt to the challenges of the next 25 years. Guests: NICE CEO Dr Sam Roberts, Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Sir Chris Whitty, MHRA CEO Dame June Raine, Director of Value and Access at Association of British HealthTech Industries Luella Trickett, and Director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science Ben Goldacre.

Following the publication of our new guideline, ovarian cancer: identifying and managing familial and genetic risk, the latest episode of NICETalks focuses on genetic testing and how it can help to identify those most at risk of ovarian cancer. We talk to Ranjit Manchanda, professor of gynaecological oncology, Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust, Dr Judith Hayward, GP with special interest in genetics and Joanne Stanford who joined us to share her personal experience of genetic testing.

In this month's podcast, we speak with Jeanette Kusel, director of NICE Advice and Luella Trickett, director of value and access at the Association of British HealthTech Industries. They outline the benefits and opportunities NICE Advice can provide. Go to: https://www.nice.org.uk/about/what-we-do/life-sciences/nice-advice-service?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=nicetalks&utm_campaign=january2024&utm_term=landingpage&utm_content=linkclick

In this episode, the directors of NICE's guidance producing centres reflect on the highlights of 2023. We hear from Mark Chapman, interim director of HealthTech; Helen Knight, director of medicines evaluation; and Professor Jonathan Benger, chief medical officer and interim director of the centre for guidelines.

More than 10,000 virtual ward beds will be used by the NHS in England this winter to care for people with an acute respiratory infections. To learn more about the benefits and opportunities of introducing a virtual ward, or hospital at home service, our guests are Mark Salmon, programme director in the Science, Evidence, and Analytics Directorate at NICE and Becky Housley, consultant nurse at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with responsibility for the virtual health hub.

It is estimated that there are around 85,000 strokes every year in England, with over 1 million people currently living with its long-term effects. We catch up with Jon Brown, chair of the independent committee and Professor Stephen Hill, lay member on the committee about NICE’s updated guidance on stroke rehabilitation.

We’re proposing changes to how we select topics for guidance production. This is to ensure we focus on what matters most to the health and care system. In this month’s podcast, we hear from Professor Jonathan Benger, NICE's chief medical officer, and Dr Jeanette Dickson, chair of council at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, about how this will work.

We’re making some changes to how we evaluate medicines to help get new treatments to patients quicker. In this month's podcast, we hear from Jenniffer Prescott, programme director within NICE's Centre for Health Technology Evaluation and Victoria Jordan from The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry about our new approach.

On 10 July NHS England published proposals for establishing an antimicrobial products subscription model for products that offer exceptional value to patients and the NHS. This builds on a recent pilot project that we co-led which paid companies a fixed annual fee for antimicrobials based on their value to the NHS, rather than the volume used. We speak with Sophie Cooper, NICE's senior scientific adviser, and David Glover, NHS England's assistant director of medicines analysis.

We speak with Meindert Boysen, NICE's head of international affairs, and Dr Nicole Mittmann, vice president of scientific evidence, methodologies and resources at CADTH - Canada's drug and health technology agency. They discuss the global partnerships that are enabling NICE to remain at the forefront of guidance development methodology.

Following Mental Health Awareness Week, we hear about 4 NICE-approved digital technologies that can help children and young people with mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety or low mood. Our guests are Sarah Byron, NICE's programme director for devices, diagnostics and digital, and Lily Tang, deputy director of digital investment strategy at NHS England.

As part of Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, we chat with 2 members of our colorectal cancer guideline committee. We're joined by Justin Davies, a consultant colorectal surgeon, and Julie Hepburn, a patient who has had colorectal cancer. They discuss the warning signs and symptoms, available treatments and their involvement in guideline development.

Chief executive Dr Sam Roberts outlines her priorities for NICE by National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

In this episode we discuss urinary tract infections (UTI's) and the publication of NICE' new quality standard. The guests are: Dr Tessa Lewis, a GP and specialist committee member on NICE's independent quality standards committee, and we speak to a patient about their experiences of dealing with recurrent UTIs in their early adulthood to find out what challenges they faced.

In this episode we discuss the role NICE plays in patient safety. The guests are: Professor Kevin Harris, senior responsible office for patient safety at NICE, and clinical advisor to the Interventional Procedures Programme and Professor Jane Blazeby, Professor of Surgery at University of Bristol.

Reducing health inequalities is part of NICE’s DNA. We offer evidence-based recommendations to help improve the health of communities. The equitable implementation of NICE recommendations ensures that care provided is effective, makes efficient use of resources and reduces inequalities and unwarranted variation. Taking part in this episode is NICE chief executive Dr Sam Roberts; was Dr Bola Owolabi, direcor of healthcare inequalities at NHS England; Dr Lesley Owen, a technical advisor at NICE; and Dr Aoife Molloy, a senior clinical advisor at the National Inequalities Improvement programme at NHS England. Learn more about NICE's role in reducing health inequalities at: https://www.nice.org.uk/about/what-we-do/nice-and-health-inequalities

We speak to Consultant Respiratory Physician Dr Hitasha Rupani, Medicines Consultant Clinical Adviser at NICE Jonathan Underhill and asthma patient Sheba Joseph about NICE’s recently published patient decision aid on asthma inhalers and climate change. The aid supports people with asthma to consider whether they might be able to use inhalers which have a smaller carbon footprint as part of their treatment plan. You can view the patient decision aid by visiting the NICE website: https://bit.ly/3fnLt1K

In September 2022, NICE published its guideline on the assessment, management and preventing recurrence of self-harm. We speak to Professor Nav Kapur who was the topic expert on the committee. He outlines what the recommendations say and how people who self-harm can best be supported.

In this month’s NICE Talks podcast we speak to Dr Gail Allsopp, interim medical director at NICE, and Richard Jackson, patient advocate who was diagnosed with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, in 2006. We hear from Richard about his personal experience and Dr Gail Allsopp talks us through some of the current NICE recommended treatments, as well as what people can do to protect themselves from increased risk.

On this month's podcast we find out more about the launch of NICE's early value assessment programme in medical technology. This pilot will look at least 10 medical technologies, of which at least six will be digital health technologies, and provide quicker assessments of early value to identify the most promising technologies that can be used in the NHS. Our guests are Mark Chapman, NICE’s interim director of Medical Technology, and Andrew Davies, digital health lead at the ABHI.