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NICE News for Life Sciences

Bringing you our latest news, features and updates
November 2025

News
Customer collecting prescription at pharmacy

Unlocking the potential of off-patent medicines

We’ve published final guidance recommending abiraterone as a treatment option for people with a form of prostate cancer. After previously being unable to recommend abiraterone due to cost-effectiveness, we've now reassessed the treatment following the availability of lower-cost generic versions. This has resulted in a positive recommendation that could benefit 4,000 patients and save the NHS millions. 
 
The review was done as part of our whole life-cycle approach to guidance development that aims to be more responsive to changes in evidence, pricing, and clinical practice. 
Female scientist on laptop in lab

Accelerating access to liver disease treatments

We have developed a new framework to help speed up access to emerging treatments for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). This is because we've noticed companies using a variety of approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of MASH treatments, which is likely due to the complexity of the condition. 
  
By using a common framework to develop and assess evidence submissions, manufacturers and NICE evaluation committees can work together to make consistent and efficient decisions that benefit patients faster.
Catch up on all our latest news articles

Getting medicines to patients faster

Listen to this episode of NICE Talks to learn how NICE and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are launching an aligned pathway to accelerate patient access to medicines and provide a more efficient route for industry.
Listen to NICE | MHRA podcast
This initiative centres on closer collaboration and information sharing between NICE and MHRA to enable parallel publication of decisions on licensing and value. The impact of this will be significant with time to patient access reduced by 3 to 6 months.  

Find out more about this work in our blog post: Same time decisions on licensing and value - what pharmaceutical companies need to know. 

You can also watch the recording of our recent NICE/MHRA webinar: Aligned decisions, faster patient access. You’ll hear directly from NICE and MHRA leaders about how we're collaborating to deliver this ambitious vision.

Get involved

Making economic evaluations more consistent across care pathways
We’re working to bring our guidance together by topic, so that it’s all in one place, clearer to understand and easier to use. To support this important work, we need a consistent approach to economic evaluation across care pathways.

We've published a position statement on how we intend to adapt our standard economic model for specific diseases or conditions, rather than providing a fully implemented model. This is referred to as a disease-specific reference case extension. This statement explains how we'll make these adjustments and how we'll select topics for future extensions.

This represents a significant step forward in making our economic evaluation methods more coherent and useful across related pieces of guidance.
Help shape our obesity reference case extension
We're consulting on a new reference case extension that focuses on obesity in adults. Reference case extensions provide more detailed guidance in particular disease areas.

This draft reference case extension sets out standards for how technologies for overweight and obesity should be modelled, encouraging consistency and accuracy across different types of NICE guidance.

The consultation is open to all but is primarily aimed at developers of medicines and healthtech that tackle obesity, and health economists who design economic models used to demonstrate cost effectiveness.

Consultation closes at 5pm on Wednesday 3 December 2025.
Comment on obesity reference case

Events
Enabling healthtech development and uptake. Learn how NICE and NIHR support industry to develop healthtech and drive its adoption across health and care. Friday 28 November 2025. 10am to 11am. Online.

Join our free webinar - enabling healthtech development and uptake

Learn how NICE and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) support healthtech developers with product development and health and care system adoption.

  • Friday 28 November 2025, 10am to 11am GMT.
Designed specifically for small and medium healthtech companies, you'll discover how to make the most of opportunities for healthtech development and evaluation support. 
 
Delivered by experts from our NICE Advice service and the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre Network, do not miss this opportunity to give your innovation the best chance of market access success. 
Secure your place

Our new approach to healthtech evaluation

Join Rebecca Owens, technical adviser and project specialist at NICE Advice for this free webinar: 

  • Thursday 4 December 2025, 1pm to 2pm GMT. 

Rebecca will be sharing insights into our new product lifecycle approach to healthtech evaluation and what separates successful technologies from those that stall.  

Hosted by the Life Science Access Academy, non-members of the academy are welcome to attend.  
Register for healthtech webinar

Blogs

Focusing on what matters most to the NHS - our refreshed forward view


Our chief medical officer, Jonathan Benger, outlines our priority topics for NICE evaluation between 2025 and 2026. We're focusing on 8 key areas that include emerging biosimilar medicines and digital innovations in musculoskeletal care. 
Read Jonathan's blog

How NICE is opening pathways to digital health technologies for the NHS

Sarah Byron, NICE’s programme director for healthtech strategy and development, explains why the UK government’s 10 Year Health Plan is a game changer for healthtech and how we’re driving these changes forward at NICE.
Read Sarah's blog

Announcements

New best practice principles for generative AI in health economic modelling

Our Health Technology Assessment Innovation Laboratory has published findings from a pioneering project examining how generative AI could transform health economic evaluation, a resource-intensive component of health technology assessment.

The project addressed concerns about quality and consistency in AI-generated economic models by developing a set of best practice principles.

This ground-breaking research supports international efforts to harmonise generative AI standards in health economics and health technology assessment.
Read AI report

Major change for rare disease treatments is on the way

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has published a new paper committing the UK to major reform in rare therapies. It aims to make it quicker and easier to get these therapies tested, manufactured and approved in the UK. Central to this reform will be tackling the unique barriers that currently prevent life-changing rare disease therapies from reaching patients, like small patient numbers and difficult evidence generation, while maintaining safety.   

Supporting the development of these changes is a newly formed Rare Disease Consortium. It’s made up of a range of organisations including NICE and industry representatives.
Read rare therapies paper

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