Drug cost watchdog NICE expects funding boost

The healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog NICE is expecting a funding boost from the government to allow it to evaluate more treatments, its chairman said on Friday.

Michael Rawlins said he had made "a lot of noise" about new money for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and believed the government had listened.

"What we are proposing to the government is that they invest much more heavily in our guidelines programme, so that we can not just keep the existing ones up to date but do a whole lot of further guidelines," he told BBC radio.

Industry sources said separately they believed an announcement on extra funding for NICE could be included in Lord Darzi's review of the National Health Service, which is due on Monday.

That review might also see NICE being given new powers.

Since 1999, NICE has led the world in measuring the cost-effectiveness of new treatments and deciding which ones are worth using on the state-run health service.

Its actions are closely watched by other governments and insurers.

The organisation plays a key role in rationing healthcare but its decisions have often proved controversial.

Many drugmakers see it as a fourth barrier for medicines that have already been proved safe, effective and of good quality.

NICE clashed earlier this week with Swiss group Roche, which refused to provide it with cost-effectiveness data for cancer drug Avastin on the grounds that it was clear the agency was not going to accept the medicine's high price.