England’s NICE To ‘Explore’ Severity Modifier Changes As Cost-Effectiveness Threshold Branded ‘Ridiculous’

Health technology assessment body NICE said it has taken on feedback about the implications of allowing higher cost-effectiveness thresholds for some medicines after senior health economists offered diverging views on its methods.

Helen Knight, Koonal Shah, Chris Sampson, Lorna Dunning and Victoria Jordan at the NICE annual conference 2025 (Norstella)
Key Takeaways
  • England’s health technology assessment body, NICE, is listening to feedback from different stakeholders, including health economists, on how its severity modifier is applied to give certain drugs a higher value rating in assessments.
  • During the NICE annual conference, health economists were at odds over whether NICE’s thresholds should be adjusted for certain medicines, and the societal implications of any changes.
  • Industry maintained its long-standing position that NICE’s severity modifier should be adjusted to allow drugs that treat less severe conditions to have a higher weighting.

It is “ridiculous” that England’s health technology assessment (HTA) agency, NICE, uses a single threshold for the cost-effectiveness of most medicines to decide whether they can be funded through the...

“I have a love-hate relationship with cost-effectiveness thresholds. I kind of love thinking about them and writing about them and hopefully talking about them today, but I also hate them,”...

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