Issues/problem
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) allows a multidisciplinary
evaluation of health technologies and is one of the
methods available for decision-making.
Description of the problem: Technology Assessment has
developed in the 1970s and has been applied to fields other
than medicine before being deeply used to assess health
technologies. With respect to them, HTA should rest on
evidence and data and should be adapted in order to be useful
to assess the value of different health technologies.
Results
HTA has been successfully applied to the analysis of the
introduction of drugs, medical devices and equipment. As a
result, several reports are currently available. They have been
commonly provided by institutional organizations and may be
assessed with respect to international checklists and recommendations
which have been released by networks working in
the field of HTA. Notwithstanding the effort of international
networks in standardizing HTA reports, Public Health topics
remain considerably under investigated. The change in
population health need together with the economic crisis
suggest that HTA should be implemented in order to better
allocate resources, in particular in the field of preventive and
Public Health programs which may allow great benefit at
population level.
Lessons
HTA could represent an important tool to tackle Public Health
topics. Notwithstanding researchers as well as decision makers
and companies should work together in order to provide
robust evidence and chance for methods development and
standardization