Electronic paths through NICE guidance

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has launched an online tool that brings together all of its connected guidance in an electronic flowchart.

NICE Pathways will allow users to see at a glance everything NICE has set on a specific condition across a care pathway.

The first 18 pathways cover topics including chronic heart failure, depression, diabetes and smoking.

They also cover the full range of different types of NICE advice, including health technology appraisals, clinical guidelines, public health and social care advice and quality standards and implementation tools.

NICE said users did not need to understand how it classifies its guidance to read everything it has said on a particular topic.

Dr Gillian Leng, NICE deputy chief executive and chief operating officer for NHS Evidence, said the tool starts with a broad overview and then goes into increasing detail about NICE recommendations and advice.

She added: “NICE Pathways will provide a useful starting point for users new to a topic whilst giving specialists confidence that they are up-to-date with everything NICE has recommended.”

The Institute said the launch of the online tool was part of a wider move to provide a more personalised, audience-focused way of looking at NICE guidance.

Dr Leng said it was also part of a bigger picture to fully digitise NICE guidance and resources and to lead to NICE guidance being available through enhanced internet access and mobile devices.

She added: “We will develop full text searching and eventual linking from NHS Pathways to the evidence used to develop NICE guidance recommendations. We also anticipate that third-party providers of information will be able to use our products in applications such as decision support systems.”

The pathways are available on the NICE website and the NHS Evidence website.