Hospital-Based Health Technology Assessment: The Next Frontier

Abstract

Thanks to the advances of both scientific knowledge and healthcare technologies over the last century, life expectancy and quality of life have increased considerably. Today, there are more than 500,000 medical devices on the market and we are witnessing an annual growth rate of in-patient pharmaceutical spending in Europe of 1.5 %. Hospitals are the main entry door for health technologies; which raises the question, how should hospital decision-makers select the technologies that will provide the best outcomes at an affordable price for their hospital?. In an era of fixed or increasingly smaller effective budgets, more than ever hospital managers have to provide the best care at the lowest possible cost. Therefore, hospital managers need to make decisions that maximize the value generated from each dollar the hospital spends. HTA performed in the hospital context for managerial decisions to inform local decisions on the uptake, or disinvestment, of health technologies is increasingly known as hospital-based HTA (HB-HTA). HB-HTA is not only about producing context-specific and methodologically sound reports for hospitals; it is also a way of organizing HTA activity in hospitals. HB-HTA is growing around the world. Information on how to properly develop HTA at hospital level is now available through AdHopHTA, an EU project which provides a set of guiding principles for good practices in organizing and performing HB-HTA. This chapter outlines the introductory concepts of HB-HTA and its main differential features with national/regional HTA.