How to reveal your market access blind spots

18 Sep 2026 11:27 AM

Learn how NICE Advice’s system engagement service helps life sciences companies spot NHS adoption barriers before they become roadblocks.

You’ve developed an innovative medicine, device, diagnostic or digital technology. Your evidence is strong. But strong evidence alone does not guarantee routine NHS patient access.

Where does your product sit in the treatment pathway?  How might potential uncertainties in your evidence base be viewed by a NICE committee? What does the NHS need in order to adopt your product into routine care?  These connected questions often sit between product development, health technology assessment and NHS adoption. They are not always easy questions to answer from published information alone. Guidance, methods and process documents can explain the formal routes and requirements, but they rarely show how the answers connect for your specific technology and your specific situation. That's the gap where market access can start to feel unclear. 

What this looks like in practice

The following are illustrative examples of the kinds of challenges companies bring to a NICE Advice system engagement meeting. 

Example 1: A pharmaceutical company is developing an innovative treatment and is uncertain where it would best fit within current treatment pathways, and whether it might be suitable for a cost comparison appraisal by NICE. In a system engagement meeting, they explore these questions directly with clinicians, NICE colleagues and NHS stakeholders, each bringing their own lens to the conversation. Clinicians speak to the unmet need and where the treatment is likely to offer most value in practice. NICE colleagues consider the implications for health technology assessment  and how the case could be made in the context of the evidence base. NHS stakeholders highlight the practical implications for service delivery, which in turn raises evidence considerations, such as implementation costs. Together, this gives the company a joined-up view of how their treatment is likely to be received across the system, helping them understand the implications for their evidence and access strategy.

Example 2: An overseas healthtech company is preparing to launch a diagnostic technology in England. They have assumed primary care is the natural setting for adoption, based on how the product is positioned in their home market. In a system engagement meeting, NHS clinicians explain that primary care pathways would not support the technology in the way the company expects, and that its clinical value would be far better realised in a hospital setting. This steer reshapes the company's whole approach to positioning, evidence generation and stakeholder engagement. 

In both cases, the value comes from hearing directly from the people who work inside the system daily, rather than from external interpretation of how that system might behave.  

How a system engagement meeting works 

A NICE Advice system engagement meeting is a confidential, 2 to 3-hour conversation with relevant health system stakeholders, tailored to a company's specific questions. As the NHS in England’s health technology assessment body, NICE is uniquely placed to identify and bring together the clinical experts, key opinion leaders, NICE colleagues and NHS leaders most relevant to your product, drawing on connections and insight that sit inside the system where adoption decisions get made. 

It’s a space to talk honestly about the challenges ahead, with the people best placed to help. 

Better context, better decisions 

The purpose of a system engagement meeting is to give companies better context for the choices ahead, whether that's understanding the strengths and limitations of different evidence approaches, identifying barriers to implementation, or knowing which stakeholders to engage and when.

The results speak for themselves. Between September 2025 and August 2026, system engagement clients who responded to our survey rated the service 4.8 out of 5 for satisfaction, and 90% said they would be likely to recommend it to others. 

Get in touch 

Reach out to our friendly and expert NICE Advice team. It only takes a few minutes to complete our enquiry form – simply provide a brief overview of your product and the support you're looking for, and we'll get back to you. We'll offer you a free 30-minute call to fully understand your market access challenges.