Sir An­drew Dil­lon, NICE's first — and on­ly — chief ex­ec­u­tive to step down next year

Us­ing a lap­top bor­rowed from his for­mer em­ploy­er, South Lon­don’s St George’s Hos­pi­tal, Sir An­drew Dil­lon set about es­tab­lish­ing NICE — launched by the then health sec­re­tary Frank Dob­son — in 1999.  On Thurs­day, the UK cost-ef­fec­tive­ness watch­dog said its first and on­ly chief ex­ec­u­tive — Dil­lon — is step­ping down in March 2020.

Back in the day, de­ci­sions about which drugs and in­ter­ven­tions were fund­ed by the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) were made at the lo­cal lev­el, but this ‘post­code pre­scrib­ing’ sys­tem was fraught with skewed health­care de­ploy­ment mak­ing the struc­ture un­sus­tain­able. A na­tion­al sys­tem was deemed nec­es­sary — and NICE was formed to bridge that gap.

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