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Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of financial interests among patient organisations contributing to health technology assessment at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England, and the extent to which current disclosure policy ensures decision-making committees are aware of these interests.

Design: Policy review using annual accounts, reports and websites of patient organisations, a database of payments declared by pharmaceutical manufacturers (Disclosure UK), other manufacturer declarations, responses from patient organisations, and declarations of interests by nominated representatives of patient organisations.

Setting: Appraisals of medicines and treatments for use in the English and Welsh National Health Service.

Participants: 53 patient organisations contributing to 41 NICE technology appraisals published in 2015 and 2016, with 117 separate occasions that a patient organisation contributed to the appraisal of a technology.

Main outcome measures: (i) Prevalence of specific interests, i.e. funding from manufacturer(s) of a technology under appraisal or competitor products; (ii) Proportion of specific interests of which NICE decision-making committees were aware; (iii) Proportion of specific interests for which disclosure was not required by current NICE policy.

Results: 38/53 (71.7%) patient organisations had accepted funding from the manufacturer(s) of a technology or a competitor product in the same or previous year that they had contributed to the appraisal of that technology. Specific interests were 46 present on 92 out of 117 (78.6%) occasions that patient organisations contributed to appraisals in 2015 and 2016. NICE decision-making committees were aware of less than a third of specific interests (36/115, 31.3%). For over half of the specific interests of which committees were unaware (42/79, 53.2%), disclosure by patient organisations was not required by current NICE policy.

Conclusions: Specific interests are highly prevalent among patient organisations contributing to health technology assessment. NICE is reviewing its disclosure policy to ensure that decision-making committees are aware of all relevant interests.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an open access article made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC-BY-NC).
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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