Introduction
Announced in the 2025 NHS 10-year plan, the National HealthTech Access Programme (NHAP) aims to accelerate and improve equity of access to selected high-impact, non-medicine technologies, including digital products, across England and Wales
However, the extent to which previous NICE recommendations for digital HealthTech have translated into local patient access remains unclear
Standard NICE HealthTech guidance does not automatically require NHS funding. Outside specific mandatory funding arrangements, adoption depends on local commissioning decisions, budgets and population needs
Reviewing historical NICE assessments alongside local access may provide context for understanding NHAP’s potential impact
Objectives
- Assess the rates of positive and negative NICE recommendations for digital therapeutic products since 2020 and analyse whether the number and proportion of positive recommendations have increased since the introduction of the NHAP
- Assess whether positive recommendations translated into local access using digital mental health products as a proxy
Conclusions
- NICE assessments of digital HealthTech has expanded substantially since 2023, although the number of products evaluated varied considerably between years. This variation may reflect differences in the number and size of appraisals, as individual NICE assessments can evaluate multiple digital products
- The proportion of products receiving a positive recommendation increased from 48% in 2023 to 66% in 2026. This trend should be interpreted cautiously, as there was an increase in products gaining conditional use
- Despite increasingly positive NICE recommendations across multiple therapeutic areas, national endorsement does not consistently translate into local patient access
- Mental health case studies demonstrated substantial variation between ICBs, suggesting that positive national guidance alone has been insufficient to ensure equitable access
- Limited national implementation and funding mechanisms may partly explain this variation. NHAP may help bridge the gap between national assessment and local adoption by linking recommendations for selected HealthTech to more consistent national funding
- Further evaluation will be required to determine whether NHAP improves both the consistency and speed of patient access to recommended digital technologies