In Hungary, the history of the health technology assessment (HTA) dates back to 1993 when HTA and related activities started by professional initiatives. The legal background, institutionalization, and training capacities were created between 1998 and 2004. The main challenges for HTA in Hungary are partly similar to the ones in countries with a developed economy; no question it is time for cos...

The advent of wireless technology has enabled healthcare organizations to trial innovative solutions in order to save cost and address some of the existing problems. In Australia, many healthcare organizations have either implemented or in the process of trialing wireless technology based solutions to address critical issues. This paper reports the outcome of opinions expressed by nurses on acc...

BACKGROUND In conjunction with other important movements in contemporary medicine, including evidence-based medicine (EBM), health technology assessment (HTA) has promoted a culture of critical evaluation. Despite this impact, institutional and methodological challenges are associated with HTA. For example, only in recent years has HTA attempted an open dialogue with patients; however, this is ...

Today on one hand wireless is emerging as the technology that is giving shape to more convenient and cost effective world on the other hand it demands wireless technology to expand from single home to whole world. This paper presents a comparison of the existing wireless technology Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) and WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e/m), with respect to technology which provides a better solution to bui...

The well-designed, model-based cost-utility analysis by Ginsberg and colleagues provides useful information on the value for money of universal GBS screening in Israel. An extended application of the model-based approach used in the study could provide policymakers additional practical information on the budget impact of a potential universal GBS screening program. Such an approach could also b...

OBJECTIVES Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been suggested by some researchers as a method to capture the benefits beyond quality adjusted life-years in a transparent and consistent manner. The objectives of this article were to analyze the possible application of MCDA approaches in health technology assessment and to describe their relative advantages and disadvantages. METHODS Thi...

Embedding health technology assessment (HTA) in a fair process has great potential to capture societal values relevant to public reimbursement decisions on health technologies. However, the development of such processes for priority setting has largely been theoretical. In this paper, we provide further practical lead ways on how these processes can be implemented. We first present the misconce...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to develop criteria for the prioritization of topics for health technology assessment (HTA) in the healthcare system of Kazakhstan. METHODS Initial proposals for criteria were suggested through consultation with Ministry of Health (MoH) policy areas. These were refined through a workshop attended by HTA department staff, persons from medical universities a...