Economic modelling of diagnostic and treatment pathways in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence clinical guidelines: the Modelling Algorithm Pathways in Guidelines (MAPGuide) project.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guidelines (CGs) make recommendations across large, complex care pathways for broad groups of patients. They rely on cost-effectiveness evidence from the literature and from new analyses for selected high-priority topics. An alternative approach would be to build a model of the full care pathway and to use this as a platform to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of multiple topics across the guideline recommendations.