Since 2002, NHS organizations in England and Wales have been required to pay for medicines and treatments recommended in NICE "technology appraisals." The NHS usually does not provide medicines or treatments that are not recommended by NICE — although exceptions are possible.

In an astonishing turn of events the chairman of NICE, Sir Michael Rawlins has turned this established wisdom on its head. Arguing that RCT's have been elevated to an "undeserved pedestal" and holding out the prospect that, in future, some drugs could be approved without meeting this exacting gold standard.

Primary angioplasty is set to become the nation’s first line of treatment for heart attacks, saving hundreds of lives each year.

The rising tide of protest over the refusal by the NHS to provide expensive drugs for cancer and other conditions is being funded by the pharmaceutical industry, an investigation by The Independent has revealed.

Scientific research has been a core goal of the NHS since its foundation — but one might be forgiven for not knowing it. For years, the funds for research have been distributed within the regional health-care deliverers in a system that might have been designed to obstruct collaboration with universities and drugs companies. All credit, then, to the NHS's director-general of research and development, Sally Davies. With the creation of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), a virtual body within the NHS, Davies has dragged the funds into the daylight. By 2011, these are expected to amount to about £1 billion (US$2 billion).

The overwhelmingly negative slant that the media give to reporting of the health service in Britain does not reflect the experiences of newscaster Jon Snow or those of people he talks to, he recounts.

Setting an example for irresponsibility while violating internal Department of Health policies, the UK National Health Service (NHS) has lost unencrypted data on 31,000 patients. The data was lost when thieves stole several NHS laptops.

Doctors must display posters or give out information leaflets detailing any ethical objections they hold on abortion or other contentious medical issues under new guidelines published today by the medical regulator.