Health Technology Assessments (HTAs) are key when it comes to determining which healthcare interventions are worth funding.

In a new mini-series of blogs, we explore the world of HTAs, including their importance, challenges and role in decision-making.

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When is a Health Technology Assessment needed?

Around the world, access to high-quality healthcare and the best health services available is highly valued. However, a challenge for many countries is to provide safe and effective care while dealing with limited funding. This means that decisions must be made on which health problems take priority, and which health services give the best value for money for a health problem.

Health Technology Assessments (HTAs) help in taking these decisions by looking at the benefits, safety and costs, as well as the broader impact of any intervention used to improve health.

What questions lie behind an HTA?

Assessing the effectiveness of interventions in health involves multiple perspectives, and great strides have been made to embrace them. While it is crucial to understand the clinical effectiveness of an intervention, it is equally important to understand whether the improvements an intervention brings are worth its costs.

The health problem should be precisely defined, and interventions to tackle it should be assessed to determine their clinical and cost-effectiveness (which intervention provides the greatest health gain for the least resources?) as well as affordability (which intervention least impacts on personal, organisational or public finances?). As such, an HTA is a multi-faceted process which requires careful consideration throughout.

HTA mini-series

To explore more in depth how HTAs work, we are launching a mini-series of blogs on this topic which is part of the wider MIDAS series on Simplifying Health Economics.

The first blog, written by Dr Luís Filipe, will investigate how opportunity costs and budgetary constraints are taken into account in HTAs, followed by another blog by Luís on the role played by political decision-making and societal preferences.

Then Dr Valerio Benedetto will delve into the question of how equity considerations are incorporated in HTAs, and he will also explore the potential lack of resources that may affect HTAs.

Lastly, Professor Andy Clegg will consider decision-making using HTAs, and we will provide an ARCBITE outlining an example of a published HTA.

Keep an eye out for our future blogs and we hope you will enjoy them!

Authors of this blogpost and HTA mini-series:

Dr Valerio Benedetto, Professor Andy Clegg and Dr Luís Filipe

For any information please contact ARCNWC-MIDAS@uclan.ac.uk