New technologies with the potential to improve the health of populations are continuously being introduced. But not every technological development results in clear health gains. Health technology assessment provides evidence-based information on the coverage and usage of health technologies, enabling them to be evaluated properly and applied to health care efficaciously, promoting the most effective ones while also taking into account organizational, societal and ethical issues. This book reviews the relationship between health technology assessment and policy-making, and examines how to increase the contribution such research makes to policy- and decision-making processes. By communicating the value and potential of health technology assessment to a wider audience, both within and beyond decision-making and health care management, it aims ultimately to contribute to improve the health status of the population through the delivery of optimum health services.

This book disentangles the issues in connection with the advancement of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and its interface with health policy. It highlights the factors that should shape its progress in the near future. Interdisciplinary and critical views from a number of professionals are put together in a prescient order to cast some light and make recommendations as to the next steps HTA should take to be fit for purpose. A wealth of documents dealing with HTA have been published over the last three decades. HTA allegedly is one of the bedrocks of regulation and medical decision making. However, counter vailing visions contend that geographical variations in the role that HTA is actually playing within countries pinpoints specific room for improvement. Given our social preferences, cherry-picking HTA’s features and successes over the last decades moves it away from its possibility frontier. Some of the most noteworthy hindrances that HTA faces, in several countries, to making headway towards its consolidation as an efficient tool for regulation and decision making are as follows: insufficient resources, delays in assessment, inadequate priority setting, regulatory capture, public distrust, actual influence on regulatory decisions, the need for strengthening international cooperation and harmony, the lack of sound and consistent assessments of diagnostic tests, medical devices and surgical innovations and limited dissemination. Time has come for HTA to take a renewed stand. There is a pressing need to submit HTA to in-depth critical scrutiny.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

This book analyses the factors that influence the development and implementation of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) from multiple perspectives. It investigates the development of HTA activities in decentralized countries with a specific focus on the analysis of healthcare professionals’ perceptions. Although these perceptions are highly relevant in terms of implementing HTA processes, especially at the local level, they are rarely captured, and require further investigation, which this book provides. In particular, HTA has been introduced as a support tool for reviewing and assessing the introduction and dissemination of healthcare technologies. The book discusses how individual and organisational factors affect knowledge production and translation, and their relevance in the context of HTA. Furthermore, it explores how HTA could be more successfully implemented in decentralized healthcare systems.

In this era of finite budgets, healthcare rationing, medication shortages, and the global aging and burgeoning of populations, numerous stakeholders in the healthcare arena must understand the basic principles of pharmacoeconomics and how these may be correctly applied to facilitate drug development, rationing, patient segmentation, disease management, and pricing model development. Pharmacoeconomics: From Theory to Practice, Second Edition focuses on how to more efficiently and rationally leverage these healthcare resources, not by restricting access to necessary services, but by using them more efficiently. This updated volume arms decision makers with the tools they need to make wise choices in an area where the stakes are extremely high—the health of the global population. Key Features: Introduces the major concepts and principles of Pharmacoeconomics Gives updated information about pharmacoeconomic models, value-based pricing, novel modelling methodologies and international utilization of these modalities in government, the pharmaceutical industry, and health care settings Demonstrates the full range of ethical and moral issues, as well as overall public health and commercial concerns that are often involved in decisions entailing pharmacoeconomic issues Presents both theory and methodology discussions, including real-world examples, in each chapter 'The methods and application of pharmacoeconomics are rapidly evolving, so the new edition of this textbook is very timely. It provides an excellent introduction for those new to the field, whether they be students, professionals within the pharmaceutical industry, or health care professionals more generally. A particularly useful feature of the book is that it gives an introduction both to the main methods used in pharmacoeconomics studies and how these studies are used in decisions about the reimbursement or appropriate use of medicines in several countries.' - Michael Drummond, Professor of Health Economics, University of York

Cancer Care: Assuring Quality to Improve Survival surveys the policy trends in cancer care over recent years and looks at survival rates to identify the why some countries are doing better than others.

A timely work describing how localized hospital-based health technology assessment (HB-HTA) complements general, ‘arms-length’ HTA agency efforts, and what has been the collective global impact of HB-HTA across the globe. While HB-HTA has gained significant momentum over the past few years, expertise in the field, and information on the operation and organization of HB-HTA, has been scattered. This book serves to bring this information together to inform those who are currently working in the field of HTA at the hospital, regional, national or global level. In addition, this book is intended for decision-makers and policy-makers with a stake in determining the uptake and decommissioning of new and established technologies in the hospital setting. HTA has traditionally been performed at the National/Regional level by HTA Agencies, typically linked to governments. Yet hospitals are the main entry door for most health technologies (HTs). Hospital decision-makers must undertake multiple high stakes investment and disinvestment decisions annually for innovative HTs, usually without adequate information. Despite the existence of arms-length HTA Agencies, inadequate information is available to hospital decision-makers either because relevant HTA reports are not yet released at the time of entry of new technologies to the field, or because even when the report exists, the information contained is insufficient to clarify the contextualized informational needs of hospital decision makers. Therefore, there has recently been a rising trend toward hospital-based HTA units and programs. These units/programs complement the work of National/Regional HTA Agencies by providing the key and relevant evidence needed by hospital decision makers in their specific hospital context, and within required decision-making timelines. The emergence of HB-HTA is creating a comprehensive HTA ecosystem across health care levels, which creates better bridges for knowledge translation through relevance and timeliness.

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