Session (CTI)

Over the past three years, NICE has undertaken a major transformation of its HealthTech offer to better meet the needs of patients, the NHS, and innovators. This session will showcase the evolution of NICE’s HealthTech HTA programme, which now supports the full lifecycle of health technologies, from early value assessment of breakthrough innovations to evaluating technologies in widespread use. This includes a refreshed approach to digital tools, AI-enabled interventions, and combination technologies, all underpinned by a commitment to timely, useful, and value-driven guidance. This work is strongly aligned with the ambitions of the UK Government’s 10-Year Health Plan for England, which places technology at the heart of future healthcare delivery. We will also explore NICE’s pioneering work in AI for HTA through its HTA Lab, a sandbox environment for testing new methods, and leveraging AI in both the technologies we assess and the way we assess them through automation, prediction and reasoning. Attendees will be invited to share methodological challenges they face in evaluating healthtech, helping to shape future international collaboration and methods development. This session will explore whether HTA for healthtech is indeed different from medicines, and whether there are unique methodological challenges that need to be addressed separately, including unique methodological challenges posed by AI in HTA.