Discovery
Which transitions are worth watching.
Forecasting answers a question you bring us. Discovery is for when you do not yet know which question to ask: it reads emerging evidence and surfaces the authority decisions worth asking about. The 18 entries below are the current list — each one checked against its own source by hand, not generated and left unread.
Two functions, one system
Discovery finds the question. Forecasting scores it.
Finding the right question and scoring it are separate jobs. Discovery watches evidence as it accumulates — new results, replication, expert opinion shifting. When it surfaces something, it tells you how far the evidence has moved and where it appears to be heading, not a probability. Probabilities only come from a registered forecast.
Reads the early stages — new evidence, replication, expert recognition, real-world confirmation — and surfaces the changes that look headed for a guideline, regulatory, or coverage decision.
Takes a question — from Discovery or from you — and puts a probability and deadline on it, then gets scored on the result.
What Discovery reads
Four stages of evidence, all read from the public record.
Discovery will read the same public sources a forecast later freezes — trial registries, publications, guideline drafts, advisory committee materials, conference proceedings. Everything is timestamped and traced to a source you can check. Nothing comes from private information.
New trial results, safety signals, subgroup analyses entering the public record.
Confirmatory data, meta-analytic convergence, and effect-size stability across cohorts.
KOL convergence, review-literature consensus shifts, conference narrative change.
RWE publication, field-level interpretation shifts, observable procedural signals.
We observe promotional, efficacy, and coverage positions only — no safety surface. Adverse-event, REMS, boxed-warning, and recall-safety intelligence is outside what we track, by design.
Read the full ladder, including observable signals and validation criteria for each rung, in the Evidence-to-Action Ladder reference.
Currently on the watchlist
13 authority decisions with an open process.
Each entry names an institution, states what that institution has itself published, and names the decision its own procedure leads to. Every line is traceable to a source you can open.
There are no probabilities here, and there will not be. A probability is attached only to a registered forecast, and none of these is one — this is a reading of the public record, scored by nobody. Entries with a dated next step come first, soonest first; then entries whose window has closed and whose output could land at any time; then entries with nothing dated. That ordering is not a ranking by importance or likelihood.
- 01European Commission — HTA Coordination Group Joint clinical assessment scopeR7
Joint clinical assessments have applied to new cancer medicines and advanced therapy medicinal products since January 2025. A submission request template for medical devices was updated in July 2026, and a webinar for patients and clinical experts on high-risk devices and IVDs is scheduled.
- 02ICER A therapy for Parkinson's diseaseR3 → R7
The draft scoping document went through public comment and a revised scope was scheduled to follow. The assessment covers comparative clinical effectiveness and value.
- 03World Health Organization Model Lists of Essential MedicinesR3 → R5
The application period for the 2027 update is open. Applications are assessed on effectiveness and safety alongside burden of disease, resource use, and feasibility.
- 04ICER Treatments for Friedreich's ataxiaR3 → R7
The draft scoping document went through public comment and a revised scope was scheduled to follow.
- 05FDA Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory CommitteeR6
The committee was terminated on 4 June 2026 after its charter expired without renewal, then reestablished for a two-year period. The Commissioner determined that restoring it serves the public interest.
- 06KDIGO Acute kidney injury and acute kidney diseaseR3 → R5
A public review draft was posted in March 2026 and the review window was extended, then closed. KDIGO describes it as the first major revision of this guideline since 2012, with revised definitions that add structural biomarkers to functional criteria.
- 07KDIGO Diabetes and chronic kidney diseaseR3 → R5
A public review draft of the 2026 guideline update was posted, covering definitions and risk assessment, glycemic monitoring, and comprehensive pharmacotherapy. The review window has closed.
- 08USPSTF Cervical cancer screeningR3 → R5
The topic sits in the Task Force's final stage, finalizing the recommendation statement. Public comment on the draft recommendation, draft evidence review, and draft modeling report has closed.
- 09USPSTF Prostate cancer screeningR3 → R5
The topic is in the developing-the-draft-recommendation stage. The standing final recommendation statement dates from 2018, and the topic does not currently carry an A or B grade.
- 10USPSTF Chronic kidney disease screeningR3 → R5
The topic is in the developing-the-draft-recommendation stage and does not currently carry an A or B grade. Two nephrology guideline revisions are moving on adjacent questions.
- 11NICE National HealthTech Access ProgrammeR7
NICE announced a programme, run with DHSC, NHS England, the MHRA, and the Office for Life Sciences, that routes selected health technologies into its technology appraisals programme alongside medicines. Named initial areas include capsule sponge testing for oesophageal cancer and image-analysis tools in prostate and breast cancer.
- 12United States federal government Core childhood vaccine recommendationsR6 → R5
A presidential document directing realignment of core childhood vaccine recommendations with practice in peer developed countries was published in June 2026. The charter of the committee that votes the schedule was re-established the month before.
- 13USPSTF Cognitive impairment in older adults screeningR3 → R5
The topic is in the developing-the-draft-recommendation stage and does not currently carry an A or B grade.
Upstream of the decisions above
5 evidence questions moving before anyone has scheduled a vote.
The list above is a calendar of processes already open. This one is earlier: published evidence at rungs 1–2 that bears on a decision above, before the institution has said anything about it. Each entry names which decision it feeds.
Naming a link asserts topical bearing and nothing else. It does not claim the evidence will move the decision, and it does not claim the institution has read it. Every figure carries its denominator, and every entry carries what is wrong with it — funding conflicts, unresolved standardisation, limits on generalisability. An upstream read that omits those is advertising.
- 01Cervical cancer screening Self-collected HPV specimensR2
A meta-analysis pooled 11 studies of self-collected specimens for detecting high-grade lesions or worse, reporting pooled sensitivity of 81% for self-collected urine · n = 3,534 and 88.6% for self-collected vaginal specimens · n = 3,523.
- 02Parkinson's disease diagnosis Alpha-synuclein seed amplification assaysR2
A systematic review characterised 78 studies published between 2019 and 2025. It reports consensus on equipment and reagent concentrations, but substantial heterogeneity in incubation temperature, buffer composition, and diagnostic thresholds, with no universally validated positivity criterion.
- 03Prostate cancer screening MRI-based screening pathwaysR2
A review of ongoing and completed randomised screening trials reports that MRI-based pathways reduce low-grade cancer detection and biopsy rates while maintaining detection of clinically significant cancer. Several named trials are running repeated screening rounds with PSA-triggered MRI.
- 04Alzheimer's disease detection Plasma p-tau217 in unselected cohortsR2
A prototype automated plasma p-tau217 immunoassay was compared against amyloid PET classification in an unselected cohort recruited across primary and secondary care · n = 588, with discrimination peaking at an area under the curve of 0.933.
- 05Chronic kidney disease screening Cost-effectiveness of population screeningR2
A microsimulation of the Belgian population modelled screening with one urine albumin-creatinine measurement and two eGFR measurements, reporting an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of €3,623 per quality-adjusted life year gained in those aged 45 and over, against a stated willingness-to-pay threshold of €43,839.
Every entry on both lists was checked against its source on 4 August 2026. Institutions move their own dates and withdraw their own documents; open the source before relying on any line here. Where the public record is too thin to read, Discovery stays quiet rather than guessing — see when a forecast is declined.
This watchlist is assembled by reading the public record. The automated feed described above is still in development. The Evidence Change Feed records guideline, regulatory, and payer evidence changes after they happen; that history is what Discovery learns from.