The new National Healthtech Access Programme - previously called the Rules Based Pathway - is a collaborative approach between NICE, the DHSC, NHS England, MHRA and the Office for Life Sciences. The approach will expand NICE's Technology Appraisals programme to incorporate health technologies. This means that like medicines, a small selection of high-impact technologies will be reimbursed and made available across the entire health service.
The new programme forms part of a strategic open innovation approach to HealthTech that is set out in the 10-Year Health Plan to create a far better experience for patients and NHS professionals.
Benefits to the wider health and care system include:
- Increasing accuracy, standardisation, and reporting speed—directly supporting the NHS's Faster Diagnosis framework and its ambitions for AI adoption in cancer pathways in its Long Term Plan
- Reducing workforce pressures by automating routine tasks and freeing pathologist time for complex cases
- Supporting national cancer targets, reducing diagnostic bottlenecks and improving throughput
- Potentially reducing inequalities in time to diagnosis linked to geography, deprivation and variation in access to specialist pathology expertise.
Professor Jonathan Benger, chief executive of NICE, said: ‘When NICE was founded 26 years ago, it set out to end the postcode lottery in access to medicines. We're now extending that same clarity and fairness to HealthTech.
‘These reforms mean that clinically and cost-effective medical devices, diagnostics and digital tools will start to be reimbursed and made available consistently across the NHS. This will give patients faster access to proven technologies and ensure NHS resources are spent where they make the greatest difference.'
In addition, NICE has revealed that the first two topics to go through the new programme are capsule sponge tests for detecting oesophageal cancer and AI tools for identifying prostate and breast cancer – technologies that could transform early diagnosis for thousands of patients each year, and drive workforce efficiency in the NHS through releasing capacity.
Ministers have also referred two other topics to NICE subject to further evidence. They are technologies to improve detection of endometrial cancer in women with unexplained vaginal bleeding, and the use of AI-to help analyse chest X-rays for suspected lung cancer in primary care referrals.
