gms | German Medical Science

6. Symposium Health Technology Assessment

Deutsche Agentur für HTA des DIMDI – DAHTA@DIMDI

03. bis 04.11.2005, Köln

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The development of HTA in Germany

Meeting Abstract

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  • author Hans-Peter Dauben - German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI), Department Medical Transactions, International Affairs, Cologne, Germany

Deutsche Agentur für Health Technology Assessment des Deutschen Instituts für Medizinische Dokumentation und Information. 6. Symposium Health Technology Assessment. Köln, 03.-04.11.2005. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2006. Doc05hta02

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/hta2005/05hta02.shtml

Published: February 13, 2006

© 2006 Dauben.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

Abstract

How it was, how it is and how it will be? The talk will focus on

  • a short overview of the German health care system
  • the history of the development of HTA in Germany
  • the actual situation of HTA
  • possible next steps in developing the future of HTA in Germany.

Out of the development in several countries all over the world to get valid scientific input systematically into the decision process of health policy, the German Ministry of Health formed a project to evaluate the usefulness of HTA for Germany and how it could be implemented (done by University Medical School, Hannover).

This was the first official step of Germany into the HTA world. Out of the results of this project, the Federal Ministry of Health comes to the conclusion, that it would be very wisely to use this new method for the future development of the decision making process in Germany.

During the legislative processes in 2000 and 2004 two institutions got the task to develop and to disseminate that high level information for all health care participations in Germany. With different focuses depending on different tasks these institutions form now the basis for HTA in Germany.

Both institutions have to struggle with this top-down-approach in Germany: the missing HTA infrastructure - not enough scientific research, not enough lectures for HTA, not enough HTA developers.

Additionally both institutions also have to raise the acceptance of the HTA processes and the HTA results. This, in our national decentralized health care system, could lead to some misunderstanding within the several bodies sometimes.

To take the next steps on our way to support the health care system we now have to strengthen the international cooperation in comparison to the continuous raise of globalization of the economic world. A big issue, in our opinion, will be the development of some kind of mutual recognition of international HTA processes and the transferability of HTA results and data into the national health care context. These topics have been in our focus for some years and are now, after establishing the necessary administrative and scientific infrastructure at DIMDI, some of our main working topics for the next 3 years.

Another topic is to spread the HTA idea more into the field of the companies. Not to raise their burden on the way to get a product into the market but to support their product development to bring the best available products for the treatment, screening or prevention of diseases as fast as possible to the patient and the health care professionals.

Outline

Notes

The complete lecture can be found on the website of DIMDI: http://www.dimdi.de/static/de/hta/symposien/2005/index.htm