NICE and Canadian counterpart to offer joint advice service

NICE and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health (CADTH) have joined forces to offer pharma a health technology assessment (HTA)  service.

The service will offer guidance that will help pharma develop value-based evidence by providing feedback on the company’s clinical and economical evidence generation plans.

Feedback will come armed with expert opinions spanning a range of contributors including clinicians, health economists and patient representatives.

“We recognise the inherent difficulties faced by developers in designing clinical trial programmes that meet the precise requirements of multiple international markets,” said Jeanette Kusel (pictured below), Director of NICE Scientific Advice.

“This new collaboration with CADTH uses the synergies between the English and Canadian systems and provides companies with comprehensive and practical advice from both countries through a single, streamlined process.”

The two HTA agencies have many methodologies in common, which prompted the launch of the initiative.

Pharma companies that take advantage of the service will benefit from two separate advice reports from both NICE and CADTH, key questions answered about launching a product in the UK and Canadian markets along with a joint summary.

Michelle Mujoomdar (pictured below), Acting Vice President, Evidence Standards, CADTH said: “This exciting new international collaboration between two established HTA bodies will help pharmaceutical companies develop relevant evidence for CADTH and NICE while streamlining the process of obtaining advice in two distinct markets.”

This isn’t the first time the HTA organisations have worked together. Just last month NICE, CADTH and The US-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) announced they will team up on a medicines cost evaluation project.

‘Valuing a Cure’ aims to better asses the value of new treatments, and will see the launch of new economic models that will recognise innovation while supporting healthcare systems.

Similar moves are being made elsewhere in Europe, including the Beneluxa initiative, which comprises of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria and Ireland all banding together to focus on evaluating high cost orphan medicines.

From NICE's perspective, the moves suggest the agency is looking to broaden its HTA partnerships beyond its nearest neighbours in Europe, with whom it has worked closely on harmonisation projects, most notably EUnetHTA. As the UK is preparing to leave the UK this year, it will have fewer opportunities to participate in EU-only initiatives, which are gathering momentum.