International collaboration

We are actively involved in a range of methodological research and other projects.

Our projects and partnerships help us to keep improving how NICE works. They also help us anticipate and adapt to policy developments, including changes in health and social care delivery.

Contact our research team

Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United Kingdom HTA collaboration

NICE has a collaboration arrangement with eight partner organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This arrangement preserves the governance arrangements and independence of each of the agencies, whilst creating greater opportunities to explore collaboration in key priority areas.

The collaborating HTA agencies are:

  • National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

  • Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health.

  • Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.

  • Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

  • Health Technology Wales (Velindre University NHS Trust).

  • All Wales Therapeutics & Toxicology Centre.

  • Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux.

  • Pharmac.

Read our collaboration arrangement (PDF)

Handling confidential clinical data

Health technology evaluations must strike a critical balance between ensuring transparency of the evidence and decision-making and protecting confidential information. NICE has worked with HTA agencies in Canada (CADTH) and the US (ICER) to create a more consistent approach to handling clinical data.

The agencies have published a joint position statement on the confidentiality of clinical data. The principles in the statement are operationalised in NICE health technology evaluations: the manual.

Read the position statement (Word).

Surrogate endpoints in cost-effectiveness analysis for use in health technology assessment

Surrogate endpoints are biomarkers or other intermediate outcomes used to predict the effect of a treatment on the final clinical outcome.

They are important in cost-effectiveness analysis for many Health Technology Assessment (HTA) agencies because their use in regulation can lead to a lack of long-term effectiveness data when new health technologies are introduced.

NICE worked with other HTA agencies to create best practice recommendations for using surrogate endpoints in health economic models to guide HTA decisions.

Members of the working group included:

  • Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC)

  • the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) in the US

  • the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care

  • the National Health Care Institute (ZIN) in the Netherlands

  • the Institute for Technology Assessment in Health (IETS) in Colombia

  • Rubix Health in the US.

Documents

Sharing knowledge and collaborating on the modelling treatment pathways within a disease area 

NICE is working with a group of international organisations to share learning about the development of reference models. The reference models span a disease pathway and can be used to assess multiple technologies across the pathway.

The group is also providing a simple way for organisations to exchange information, share developed pathway models, discuss best practice, give feedback, and overcome any technical and administrative issues. 

The international organisations NICE is collaborating with are: 

  • Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), from Canada

  • the National Healthcare Institute (ZIN), from the Netherlands 

  • Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), from the United States.

The group is open to collaboration with other international organisations.