HSRU, in collaboration with HERU and the section of Population Health within the University of Aberdeen is one of the nine independent academic centres in the UK commissioned to undertake technology assessment reviews (TARs) for NICE and also TARs and short reports for other NHS customers. NICE carry out appraisals of health technologies at the request of the Department of Health and provides guidance to the NHS on the clinical and cost effectiveness of selected new and established technologies. Guidance produced by NICE on health technologies is mandatory in England and Wales and applied selectively in Scotland (via the Scottish Health Technology Group and the Scottish Medicines Consortium) and Northern Ireland. The University of Aberdeen is the only academic centre in Scotland to hold a TAR contract and HSRU has been involved in the contract since 2001. The TAR work involves preparing a critique of the clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness evidence submitted to NICE by the pharmaceutical companies in support of their cases to have new or existing drugs reimbursed by the NHS as well as broader evidence syntheses that, apart from a systematic review of current clinical effectiveness evidence, may include the development of an economic model to estimate the cost-effectiveness of alternative therapeutic or diagnostic interventions.
The TAR contract has been successfully renewed for the 2022-2027 period.
NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme website
Contacts
- Miriam Brazzelli; m.brazzelli@abdn.ac.uk