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NICE Scientific Advice offers a new service for healthcare product developers to check the quality of their economic models.

Health economic models are used to demonstrate the value of a product and are an important (required in some settings) part of the process for achieving reimbursement, market access and informing health policy decisions.

NICE has launched Preliminary Independent Model Advice (PRIMA), a detailed peer review service to help developers of drugs, medical devices and diagnostics, and public health interventions ensure the quality of their model structure, coding, usability and transparency.

PRIMA offers companies independent expert advice on the robustness of economic models, helping to identify errors and flaws before they are used for healthcare decision-making. It also provides advice on how companies can improve their models and delivers a comprehensive report, a completed PRIMA checklist and an executable copy of the model with proposed amendments or corrections. Models can be submitted in Excel, WinBugs, R, and TreeAge.

Leeza Osipenko, head of NICE Scientific Advice said: “PRIMA will enable healthcare companies to health-check their economic models before they submit them as part of the formal evaluation process. This can help them prepare for a dialogue with health technology assessment organisations and payers, better demonstrate the value of their products and, potentially, speed up patient access. The service is open not only to models developed for future NICE evaluations but also to those developed in social care, public health, or in international settings.”

NICE Scientific Advice provides a fee-based consultancy service to developers of pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. It works with companies in the early stages of product development and its aim is to encourage companies to consider the relative clinical and cost effectiveness of their products which can then inform the overall product development strategy.

Further information about PRIMA