In recent years microarray technology has been increasingly used in both basic and clinical research, providing substantial information for a better understanding of genome-environment interactions responsible for diseases, as well as for their diagnosis and treatment. However, in genomic research using microarray technology there are several unresolved issues, including scientific, ethical and...

BACKGROUND The National Library of Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information offers mini-courses which entail applying concepts in biochemistry and genetics to search genomics databases and other information sources. They are highly interactive and involve use of 3D molecular visualization software that can be computationally taxing. METHODS Methods were devised to offer the co...

As IEs, we may never replace biologists and doctors in developing biomedical technologies, but we can use those tools to transform healthcare

The first steps towards Health Technology Assessment (HTA) were taken in Romania between 1992-2002 when some form of mentorship was performed in this area with Canadian support [1]; later on, from 2002 to 2011 HTA remained a subject only for the academic and research purposes. Only the pressure brought by the Memorandum of Understanding between Romanian Government with International Monetary Fu...

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) is being used increasingly in health technology assessment, although a number of methodological issues remain unresolved. Using data obtained from a randomised questionnaire survey, we investigated the metrical properties of two WTP formats, the open-ended question versus the payment scale, in the context of screening for colorectal cancer. Approximately, 2800 responses...

Shoulder surgery has emerged from being a marginalised sub-speciality to being an area of much research and advancement within the last seventy years. This has been despite the complexity of the joint, and success majorly rests on parallel development of biomedical technology. This article looks at the past and present of shoulder surgery and discusses future directions in the speciality.

Patient perspective is becoming increasingly important in healthcare decision making. Patients should be involved as ‘end-users’ in the health technology assessment (HTA) processes to broaden the perspectives of the assessments and advice provided to decision makers1. Patients can provide information on their daily experience with disease, treatments and their needs, provide views on aspects no...

BACKGROUND A variety of different approaches to the synthesis of qualitative data are advocated in the literature. The aim of this paper is to describe the application of a pragmatic method of qualitative evidence synthesis and the lessons learned from adopting this "best fit" framework synthesis approach. METHODS An evaluation of framework synthesis as an approach to the qualitative systemat...

In the editorial published in this journal, Daniels and colleagues argue that his and Sabin's accountability for reasonableness (A4R) framework should be used to handle ethical issues in the health technology assessment (HTA)-process, especially concerning fairness. In contrast to this suggestion, it is argued that such an approach risks suffering from the irrrelevance or insufficiency they war...

BACKGROUND HTA Programme funding is governed by the need for evidence and scientific quality, reflecting funding of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) by the NHS. The need criterion incorporates covering the spectrum of diseases, but also taking account of research supported by other funders. This study compared the NIHR HTA Programme portfolio of research with the UK burden of d...