ABSTRACT
The National Health Service (NHS) operates on the principle that patients do not pay out of pocket for health care at the time of access. It thus socialises the financial risks of ill-health by pooling risk and financial provision. The proposal for a National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) was one of several new NHS institutions announced in the white paper The New NHS: Modern, Dependable. When the work programme for NICE was produced in 1999, Interferon beta was listed as one of the first technologies to be appraised, with the NICE evaluation being a much more protracted process than initially envisaged. In the event, NICE was established with the status of a Special Health Authority and the role of undertaking 20 to 30 evidence-based appraisals per annum of existing clinical interventions. The Appraisal Committee met to consider its provisional determination in the light of feedback from consultees and agreed a Final Appraisal Determination (FAD) which was submitted to NICE.
