gms | German Medical Science

Based on research Health Technology Assessment (HTA) comprehensively and systematically assesses the short and long term consequences of applying health technology. Essential to HTA is its affinity to health care policy making and as the perhaps most defining characteristic, HTA is for these reasons produced with the purpose of providing rigorously developed research-based input to decision making. These characteristics of HTA, and of course its inter-disciplinary nature, is what separates HTA from primary research and from other kinds of meta-research (systematic reviews, meta-analysis etc.).

HTA has especially during the last decade prospered and is currently constituting itself as an increasingly important contributor to national, regional and local health care policy making - we even see that HTA is now a priority of supranational GOs as the EU, OECD and WHO.

This positive development is very much the result of rigorous quality assurance processes primarily focusing on the scientific robustness of HTA reports. This focus on scientific quality was and still is well chosen when HTA is in competition with other types of input to policy processes. Besides, the clinical and managerial professions had to be convinced of the advantages of combining clinical effectiveness data with information on social, organisational and economical implications into synthesised inputs to decision making.

Now HTA has become a well established input to health care planning and policy making. To fit the needs of HTA users, new HTA products have emerged: rapid HTA, horizon scanning, programs for assessing/reviewing drugs and HTA inspired decision support systems are increasingly used at hospital level. HTA is undergoing a pragmatic development, adapting to the needs of health care decision makers at different levels in the health service. This poses both opportunities and challenges to HTA as well as to doers and users of HTA.

Opportunities - because these developments have inspired doers of HTA to increase their focus on the quality and usefulness of HTA as timely and applicable input to decision making; and because doers of HTA have acquired a greater sensitivity to the needs of HTA users. No doubt the use of HTA and hence the influence of HTA on health care policy making will increase - to the benefit of both patients and health care systems. Challenges - because an uncritical and unreflected adaptation to user needs has the inherent risk of diluting HTA as a concept and threatening the hard earned quality normally associated with HTA products. Greater sensitivity to HTA user needs must be reciprocated by better understanding of HTA among policy makers and other users of HTA, and systems to ensure effective and balanced uptake of HTA information into policy and practice should be established in joint effort by both users and doers of HTA.

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