The Department of Health (England) requested that RAND Europe conduct an economic analysis of the impact of the HTA Programme. This article describes the results of that work, which consisted of analysis of the potential economic benefits of a sample of HTA funded studies and comparison to programme costs, supplemented by a set of short case studies exploring the impacts of the HTA Programme on...

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...

We describe a method to identify and recover minor human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) sequence variants from a complex population. The original heteroduplex tracking assay (HTA) was modified by incorporating a biotin tag into the probe to allow for direct sequence determination of the query strand. We used this approach to recover sequences from minor HIV-1 variants in the V3 region of...

Objective Previous work has shown that 98% of NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme projects publish in Health Technology Assessment (the peer reviewed journal for the NIHR HTA Programme). 68% of clinical trials funded by the US NIH publish, with 46% publishing within 30 months of trial completion. This study aimed to assess the time-to-publication of HTA Programme primary research ...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to describe the developing health technology assessment (HTA) activities in Brazil, both historically and in the present day. METHODS This report is a descriptive analysis based on personal experiences of the authors and on selected literature. RESULTS Interest in HTA in Brazil began in the mid-1980s. Several seminars and consultations were held, often w...

In the theme section on information retrieval for health technology assessment (HTA), we are pleased to present a series of high-quality articles. The articles address various approaches to HTA searching and information management. Information retrieval and management is an integral part of the HTA review process. Those conducting searches must, therefore, understand the nature of the different...

Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) are a key means by which national governments have responded to the challenge of ensuring equitable public access to a new range of medicines and treatment options within the context of limited national budgets for healthcare. In this paper, we apply a regulatory governance frame to the study of the Swedish process fo...

OBJECTIVES Although there is increased awareness of patient and public involvement (PPI) among health technology assessment (HTA) organizations, evaluations of PPI initiatives are relatively scarce. Our objective as members of Health Technology Assessment International's (HTAi's) Patient and Citizen Involvement Group (PCIG) was to advance understanding of the range of evaluation strategies adop...

Objectives: Methodological challenges in the evaluation of medical devices (MDs) may be different for early and late technology adopter countries, as well potential health assessment (HTA) solutions to tackle them. This study aims provide guidance Central Eastern European (CEE) countries on how address key HTA MDs with special focus transferability scientific evidence. Methods: As part COMED Ho...