"We also provide guidance on care for people with diseases and conditions, and we offer a range of services like evidence for health service, and that is our mission," says Ms Mirella Marlow, programme director, Centre for Health Technology Evaluation (NICE).

Ms Marlow says that NICE works closely with medical companies and believes that innovations can also come from smaller companies.

"We work with companies to encourage them bring their projects to us for guidance. We advise companies about evidence they will need proving that their projects are efficient. NICE is a global brand, and we are known throughout the country. Companies having NICE guidance in the UK will use that to head projects around the world. It is important for companies to engage with NICE," she elucidates.

She optimistically opines saying, "If you have a company that wants to sell products in to the UK, they can approach us. We support and fit in with the research agenda. Even if Indian companies that wants to sell their products around the world, having NICE's guidance is a good thing because it helps companies to sell around the world easily."

Talking about how companies can take advantage of NICE's services, she says, "Our approach is highly robust and we carry out high quality evaluation. We look out for clinical effectiveness and as well as cost effectiveness. We are highly regarded, and engaging with us has a great impact on the company share prices."

Companies that want to engage with NICE, can do all their submission to NICE with all the clinical evidences.

"The message is that companies need to have evidence that supports the claim for their projects that it is effective and it works," she comments.

She advises companies that do not have much idea about NICE saying, "The best thing for them is to look at the guidance that we already have on our website. There we also have the expansion about what the committee thought about the evidence, so that companies can see in detail including the summary of discussion which the committee has had and why they were persuaded or why they didn't. All of this is available in the public domain. This is NICE's great strength."

Talking about Indian companies and their innovations, she observes, "It is time to innovate because it will be great to see some innovations coming from India particularly in med-tech diagnostics. The kind of results India has shown so far is very good in innovation. We would love to have some Indian innovations benefiting the UK population."