Decision-making in the midst of uncertainty: appraising expensive medicines in England

Decisions need to be made about which services or technologies should be prioritized for provision in the NHS in England .The analysis focuses specifically on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and on how they appraise expensive medicines. This analysis takes a sociological perspective on decision-making in relation to uncertainty and how uncertainties are managed, drawing on evidence from a scoping study and an ethnographic study. Uncertainties were central to these rationing decisions.Three types of layers of uncertainty -epistemic, procedural and interpersonal – were shown to be salient. Another form of uncertainty was associated with the complexity of the science and that included the level of technicality of the information provided. The analysis highlighted the salience of uncertainties associated with interpersonal relations and the relations between the committees and the drug industry, clinical and patient experts. A key element in these relationships was trust. Decision makers adopted a mixture of formal and informal, collective and individual strategies in making decisions and a need to exercise pragmatism within a more formal institutional framework. The paper concludes by considering more recent policy developments in relation to appraising expensive medicines.