Felix Greaves
Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate
"We want to be world leading in the use of data, so we can make faster and better decisions."
What does your role involve? Help staff to understand a bit more about what you do day-to-day.
Felix Greaves, director for the Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate
I lead the Science, Evidence and Analytics (SEA) Directorate. I work with the brilliant teams in the directorate who work across research, data, evidence and delivering strategic scientific projects.
We work closely with the Centre for Guidelines and the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation to make sure we're using the best methods in the development of our products. The directorate looks for opportunities to drive innovation in all of the work we're doing. Allowing us to work smarter and faster, but balancing that with ensuring we are rigorous and robust.
On a day-to-day basis I try to support the teams to make it as easy as possible to do their jobs, making sure they have the support and resources they need. Collaboration is fundamental to the directorate’s approach. I spend a lot of time working out how we can work best with other parts of NICE and with other organisations, such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and NHSX, across the health system. I also try to make sure the directorate runs efficiently and in a well governed way. Despite my own disorganisations, the excellent SEA SLT (senior leadership team), known as the ‘sea salt’ team, are making it into a model of efficiency.
What does your directorate do? Give us an elevator pitch.
The SEA Directorate brings together the latest thinking and practice in science, evidence and data to deliver NICE’s work. We work collaboratively across the organisation, drive innovation and ensure rigour.
What makes you proud to lead your directorate?
The brilliant people who work in it – no question. They are both incredibly knowledgeable about their work and also deeply committed to it. A powerful combination.
I’m proud of the ground-breaking work we do in the scientific affairs and the data analytics teams. Both explore new methods with a distinguished record of collaboration across international projects and in academic partnerships. The team are also working on big, complex strategic scientific and innovation issues for the system. For example, they're looking into new ways to purchase antimicrobial drugs to prevent resistance, and are contributing to the development of the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP).
I'm also proud of and grateful for the fundamental work that the information and evidence services teams do. It's sometimes not in the foreground but it's absolutely vital to the mission of NICE. Information services do the 'backbone' task of identifying and extracting the information we need for our guidance products. Evidence services make sure our information and evidence – and much more besides – is made available to the wider health system.
Taken together, it’s a brilliant team of teams, with many, varied and deep skills and experience across lots of disciplines.
Felix Greaves, director for the Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate
Felix Greaves, director for the Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate
Why do you think it’s important that NICE has a new strategy right now?
The world is changing rapidly around us. NICE needs to adapt to these changes. It has a proud and deserved reputation for excellence. But it cannot stand still.
NICE wrote much of the rule book for health technology assessment (HTA) and guideline development. If it is to stay relevant, it has to stay at the front of the pack in terms of developing new methods, tackling hard challenges. And it has to work out how it can deliver at pace while still retaining the fundamental rigour that its reputation is based on.
Things were changing fast before the pandemic, and are changing faster now. How evidence is being published, the importance of real world evidence from electronic health records, the adoption of digital and genomic technologies. Everything is moving at pace. NICE needs to be alert to, relevant to and leading these changes on the front foot, not responding to them reactively. The strategy gives us a platform to look forward and anticipate these changes.
How will the strategy improve the way your directorate works?
The strategy is all about the organisation working together to deliver common goals, and it clearly sets out what those goals are. It will allow us to break down siloed working. Our goals are now no longer Centre for Health Technology Evaluation goals, SEA goals, or Centre for Guidelines goals – just jointly held organisational goals. The strategy will drive us to work collaboratively to achieve these. Establishing this new matrix working will be challenging and different – but exciting and important.
The strategy will encourage us to think about innovation in the way we do our work. Our current processes and methods are robust and effective – but are they always the most efficient? The strategy sets out a clear intent to explore new ways to deliver our core tasks. And gives us permission to try working in new ways.
The strategy will also push us to do even more work in partnership. Many of the topics we'll work on – such as real world data – are complex and not ours alone to solve. The strategy provides an impetus to build relationships with partners across the health system and in academia.
We want to be world leaders in the use of data so we can make faster and better decisions
We want to be world leaders in the use of data so we can make faster and better decisions
Looking at the strategy content, what will be the top 3 priorities that your directorate will support with?
- Making us world leading in the use of data – in all of its forms and including real world evidence – so we can make faster and better decisions.
- Exploring how we consider environmental impact in our guidance, and whether we should be looking at wider societal benefit, not just health benefit. These are big, thorny, important questions that matter in the wake of the pandemic.
- Developing new ways we can use the voice of patients and the public to inform how we work and the decisions we take. For example, setting up the new NICE Listens programme this year will be an exciting project. And it will make sure we are understanding the voice of the public who we work for.
We want to be world leaders in the use of data so we can make faster and better decisions
How will you measure the success of the strategy within your directorate?
We'll measure ourselves against achievement of the formal objectives in the strategy, reflecting our aim of strategic leadership in science and data. This includes measuring how much research funding follows our recommendations for research needs, how many times NICE’s work is cited, and what proportion of our guidance is developed with real world data.
But more than that, I think we'll know we've been successful if we can feel a tangible change in the level of cross organisational working. If the organisation feels that little bit more dynamic and agile (while retaining its rigour). And if people want to come and work here to do brilliant, creative and ground-breaking work.
Enjoy this article?
Get in touch and let us know.
Built with Shorthand