NICE's role is to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and other public health and social care services. We do this by:

— Producing evidence based guidance and advice for health, public health and social care practitioners;

— Developing quality standards and performance metrics for those providing and commissioning health, public health and social care services;

— Providing a range of informational services for commissioners, practitioners and managers across the spectrum of health and social care.

NICE is responsible for the distribution of hard copy prescribing guidance to Health Care professionals with a prescribing responsibility working within the English NHS. This comes in the form of 3 publications; the British National Formulary (BNF) and the British National Formulary for Children (BNFC), which are distributed annually and the Nurse Prescribers Formulary (NPF) which is distributed biennially. Distribution of all 3 publications takes place during September and October. Collectively 348 000 of these publications were distributed to the English NHS in 2015/16.

The criteria describing which Healthcare Professionals are eligible to receive the print BNF, BNFC and NPF is available on the NICE website (https://www.nice.org.uk/About/What-we-do/Evidence-Services/British-National-Formulary).