Economic Evaluation In Portugal – Establishment of The National Health Technology Assessment System (Sinats)

Abstract

Economics is a social science that has a focus on allocating limited resources efficiently. In health care is essential to invest properly, assuring access to health technologies with the best cost-effective profile, ensuring the sustainability of National Health Systems. In Portugal, the INFARMED – National Authority of Medicines and Health Products I. P., has been making economic evaluations of medicines for 15 years, and is currently developing the National Health Technology Assessment System – SiNATS, of the utmost importance to the National Health System. Nowadays the assessment of the technologies (relative effectiveness assessment and cost-effectiveness) is focused on medicines, within the reimbursement process and the preliminary assessment to its acquisition by the National Health System’s Hospitals. Consequently, it is always done before the reimbursement decision, as a supporting tool to the decision itself. The purpose of this model is to guarantee a global system, and at the same time, extending it to new technologies besides medicines, e. g. medical devices. In these cases, the cost-effectiveness evaluation will be done through the whole life-cycle of that technology, affecting its price and use considering its real performance; instead of only its market entry. The INFARMED, by developing SiNATS, intends to contribute to minimize expenditures in health and the citizens' life quality, in order to assure the National Health System’s sustainability and efficient usage of public resources in health. Moreover, this system also aims to observe the technologies’ effectiveness and its usage, with the purpose of reducing wastes as well as to promote and award innovation and equal access to health technologies. This research intends to verify the applicability of the universal key principles of Health Technology Assessment Systems in SiNATS, in order to guarantee that the model achieves its proposing Objectives. The study will be focused on the structure of system.