18 August 2016 - The adoption of new medical devices and diagnostics is often hampered by lack of published evidence which makes conventional health technology assessment difficult.

We now have 5 years’ experience of the Medical Technologies Advisory Committee of NICE in the United Kingdom, addressing this problem. This committee assesses devices and diagnostics against claims of advantage, to produce guidance on adoption for the health service.

Decisions about adoption of new devices and diagnostics with little evidence are influenced by judgements of their promise and the plausibility of claims that they will provide benefits in a real-world setting. This kind of decision making needs to be transparent and this article explains how these influences can be balanced against the use of more familiar criteria.

Read International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care publication