Guideline committee

NICE uses the term ‘guideline committee’ to refer to the decision-making groups that develop its guidelines. Other agencies may use different terms such as ‘guideline development group’ or ‘guideline panel’.

Patient/public members

For the purposes of this chapter the term ‘patient/public members’ is used throughout to describe the people NICE terms as ‘lay members’. The patient/public members of NICE’s GCs are recruited as individuals with a breadth of knowledge and experience about a particular topic, population, disease, condition or disability. They are not considered ‘representative’ of any particular group, organisation or patient population. We recognise that other terms are in common use but in this context ‘patient/public member’ refers to people with personal experience of a disease, condition or service (patients, consumers, users), their carers or family members, and those representing a collective group of patients, people using services or carers (representatives or advocates).