The Institute of Medicine, part of the US National Academy of Sciences, recommended last week that the country needs an independent programme to evaluate “which diagnostic, treatment, and prevention services work best for various patients and circumstances.”

The institute’s report proposes a single entity to provide “credible, unbiased information.” It would be overseen by an advisory board “constituted to minimize bias,” and its scope seems to be similar to that of the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

“Under the status quo, the quality of systematic reviews is variable and findings are often unreliable even when published …