OBJECTIVES The objective is to test the hypothesis whether NICE recommendations on the use of a new drug affect recommendations from other bodies in countries outside England and Wales. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to approach this topic quantitatively. Therefore, a sub-objective is to determine the feasibility of gathering a high quality database with sufficient number of observations to test our hypothesis. METHODS A basket of 29 drug/indication pairs and a group of 15 countries were included (Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Bosnia, Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana). Information regarding NICE HTA recommendations was extracted from NICE’s website and HTAinSite.com. Moreover, an online-survey of key opinion leaders was carried out to collect information regarding the HTA decision in 10 countries. For the remaining five countries, we used the information from their official webpages.  A descriptive analysis was conducted, including an examination of the position of each decision of NICE in comparison with that of other HTA agencies in the timeline of decision making about the 29 medicines. RESULTS There is a lack of comparability between the publically available information. The findings suggest that after the publication of a NICE appraisal there is a higher probability that an HTA is undertaken for the same drug in other countries. Furthermore, when NICE has published a negative decision, the tendency of not recommending the drug by another HTA body is much larger after than before NICE’s decision. CONCLUSIONS Issues encountered in the collection of information made it difficult to quantify the effect of NICE recommendations on HTA decisions in other countries. The results suggest that the selected agencies are considering NICE decisions as a factor for rejecting or restricting the use of drugs which in other case would be recommended or reimbursed.