NICE Medical Technologies Guidance

This issue of Applied Health Economics and HealthPolicy includes a detailed description of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance, and of its development, on the adoption into practice of the ‘PleurX peritoneal catheter drainage system for vacuumassisted drainage of treatment-resistant, recurrent malignant ascites’. This is the ninth piece of Medical Technologies Guidance on a diverse range of devices and diagnostics (table I). The aim of this Commentary is to provide some background to the NICE Medical Technologies Evaluation Programme (MTEP), and to why the assessment reports – which will be summarized in this journal – are vital to its methodology. 1. Background and Principles of Operation