Treatment uncertainties and the JLA process

For the JLA definition of a treatment uncertainty, click here.

Priority Setting Partnerships need to plan to identify uncertainties, check them and then enter them into the UK Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments (UK DUETs).

Uncertainties must be in UK DUETs before prioritisation can begin.

This is one of the most labour-intensive stages of the JLA process. The steering group will need to have identified how they will resource and action it.

People have suffered and died unnecessarily because uncertainties about the effects of treatments have not been addressed in research (Confronting Therapeutic Ignorance; Well informed uncertainties about the effects of treatments). Patients and the public have a right to expect that research funders, researchers and health professionals will identify uncertainties about whether treatments are doing more harm than good, and should expect them to organise the research needed to reduce the most important of these uncertainties. Indeed, the General Medical Council’s advice to doctors is that they "must work with colleagues and patients...to help resolve uncertainties about the effects of treatments" (Good Medical Practice, para 14f, page 13).