Important Information Commissioner Update!

Case Reference: IC-106785-N6T1

Senior Case Officer: Alice Gradwell

Our Information Commissioner Case Worker phoned me today. We asked for all the medical journals used in the decision making of the Chronic Pain Guidelines (April 2021) as we are unable to access them all due to how expensive they are to Access. Some are free but the majority are far too expensive for me to purchase (in total). 

NICE came back saying that they can't provide us with the medical journals as the NICE committee only used the summaries. They did not analyse the data from the medical journals. Which is terrible in itself, they are admitting they have not analysed the data themselves and purely relied on the authors summaries of the medical journals.

Therefore, I have asked our case worker to go back to NICE saying who actually chose the medical journals and did the people who chose the medical journals analyse the data? If so they must have access to all the medical journals.

In addition, we also stated that unpublished data was used in the decision making and NICE has denied this. I have asked our case worker to submit the evidence that we have already submitted regarding this to prove that unpublished data was used especially in the Cochrane Review. Which is heavily used as 'evidence' in the Chronic Pain Guidelines. 

As the data is unpublished we are unable to access it without NICE providing it. 

#ChronicPainisNotNICE