NICE thought, tough challenge

Congratulations!  Your pharmaceutical product or medical device or diagnostic has made it into a NICE guideline! The research, development and endless administration have paid off.  The business you deserve should now start rolling in, right?

While this might be a reasonable expectation, it’s rarely a reality.  Health SMEs with NICE recommendations are merely at the beginning of their commercial journey.  After all, a guideline is just that – a guideline. It’s not a rule or a protocol.  To get impact, what you need is a health technology assessment, which have a mandatory implementation.

So with your positive guideline in place, how do you get key NHS decision makers, purchasers and healthcare professionals to notice?  After all, they are knee-deep in guidelines and recommendations.  It’s at this stage that you need to break out of your comfort zone.  You must leave the circle of research – funding – yet more research and take a commercial leap.

Successful health SMEs need a strategy and an understanding of health policy in order to benefit from NICE guidelines.  Here are just some of the steps you may wish to take in order to turn your offering from a NICE to have into a NEED to have for the healthcare industry and consumers:

• Medical education – prescribers and medics need to know and understand about your product. They are not going to wade through a NICE guideline to learn about it.  You have to be the educator
• NHS communications – it is much more than letting them know you exist. Where does your product or device fit into the patient pathway?  What are the cost-efficiencies to them by using it?
• Health awareness campaigns & consumer engagement – establish a need for your product or service

Contact Onyx Health if you want more insight into this challenging, but rewarding marketplace.  Stay tuned to our blog for further updates.