OBJECTIVES The current and past situation of health technology assessment (HTA) in Catalonia is presented in this study. METHODS The approach used here is a historical review of facts and landmarks. RESULTS Spain has undergone radical change in many aspects, but the changes in healthcare provision have been major indeed. Catalonia has had the ability to benefit from these changes and has be...

A major driver of cost growth in health care is the rapid increase in the utilisation of existing technology and not simply the adoption of new technology. Health economists and their health technology assessment colleagues have become obsessed by technology adoption questions and have largely ignored 'technology management' questions. Technology management would include the life-cycle assessme...

OBJECTIVES Although health technology assessment (HTA) has been well established in all developed countries, it has not found a firm footing in many developing countries. This is especially true of the Asia Pacific region, which has much of the world population. METHODS The beginnings of HTA in this region go back to the work of Dr. David Banta in China and the establishment of the Asian HTA ...

Lessons from health technology assessment (HTA) organizations around the world are emerging, and only some of them are about evidence. Other lessons pertain to governance, communication, trust, politics, and the persistence of local “practice patterns” for evidence evaluations. This should not come as a surprise. HTA organizations worldwide have different constituencies and organizational struc...

Priority setting for the evaluation of health technologies in the Netherlands is exclusively based on the scientific merits of individual research proposals. This process has not resulted in satisfactory allocation of resources. Therefore, societal criteria for setting priorities for health technology assessment have been proposed as an adjunct to scientific criteria. These societal criteria in...

Meta-analyses are used to synthesize treatment information through application of statistical methods during all phases of clinical research and development, especially in the context of health technology assessment of the relative effectiveness between two treatments across trials as well as in drug reimbursement applications.1 The consistency of the treatment effect between groups of trials c...

OBJECTIVES The internal evaluation studied the development of the European network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) Project in achieving the general objective of establishing an effective and a sustainable network of health technology assessment (HTA) in Europe. METHODS The Work Package 3 group was dedicated to this task and performed the work. Information on activities during the ...

There seems to be a general agreement amongst practitioners of economic evaluations, including Health Technology Assessment, that the explicit statement of a perspective is a necessary element in designing and reporting research. Moreover, there seems also to be a general presumption that the ideal perspective is “societal”. In this paper we endorse the first principle but dissent from the seco...

The need to progress and innovate in health technology assessment (HTA) is a must in a continuously changing environment. The HTAi Policy Forum reflected on two specific areas for development where it was thought there was need for careful consideration and deliberation during the main annual meeting in February 2016. The study by Husereau et al. (1) in this journal presents the discussions res...

OBJECTIVES The history of health technology assessment (HTA) in Mexico is examined, starting with the efforts to incorporate this topic into the policy agenda and culminating with the recent creation of a specialized public agency. METHODS Information was gathered through a bibliographic search and interviews with actors involved in HTA in Mexico. RESULTS HTA efforts were developed in Mexic...