BACKGROUND Health technology assessment (HTA) is mostly used in the context of high- and middle-income countries. Many "resource-poor" settings, which have the greatest need for critical assessment of health technology, have a limited basis for making evidence-based choices. This can lead to inappropriate use of technologies, a problem that could be addressed by HTA that enables the efficient u...

Previous studies demonstrated that a subset of synMuv B mutants ectopically misexpress germline-specific P-granule proteins in their somatic cells, suggesting a failure to properly orchestrate a soma/germline fate decision. Surprisingly, this fate confusion does not affect viability at low to ambient temperatures. Here, we show that, when grown at high temperature, a majority of synMuv B mutant...

We investigated selective attention for masked and unmasked, threat, and positively valenced words, in high trait anxious (HTA) and low trait anxious (LTA) individuals using the emotional Stroop colour-naming task. State anxiety was varied within participants through the threat of electric shock. To investigate whether the sequencing of the state anxiety manipulation affected colour-naming late...

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety of hospital discharge 24 hours after laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and to identify possible factors associated with longer hospital stays. MATERIAL AND METHODS Retrospective study of patients diagnosed with localized prostate cancer underwent to laparoscopic radical prostatectomy consecutively between May of 2007 and December of 2010. Those patients who met...

OBJECTIVES This study aims to review the development of health technology assessment (HTA), including the socioeconomic context, outputs, and policy utilization in the Thai setting. METHODS This study was conducted through extensive document reviews including these published in both domestic and international literature. RESULTS Evidence suggests that contextual elements of the health syste...

HTA is considered the most comprehensive and transparent method of supporting decision-makers in their choices in Public Health. HTA on vaccines is being performed by many experts. However, they often present their studies to colleagues, but not to decisionmakers, who should be the main target and current users. It is therefore crucial to improve the transfer of scientific data to decision- mak...

McDonald et al. searched for reasons why Canada and other countries might separate their cancer drug HTA process. They appraised whether any of the rationales they found were derived from the assumption commonly made by health economists that ‘‘the goal of society or decision makers is to maximize the total aggregate health benefit conferred to a population for a given level of resources’’. The...

OBJECTIVES Adapting health technology assessment (HTA) reports for different contexts could reduce the need for multiple reports on the same health technology with resultant saving of time and resources. This article describes an instrument, the adaptation toolkit, which has been developed to aid in the process of adaptation of HTA reports. METHODS The toolkit was developed by a partnership o...

Objectives: Methodological challenges in the evaluation of medical devices (MDs) may be different for early and late technology adopter countries, as well potential health assessment (HTA) solutions to tackle them. This study aims provide guidance Central Eastern European (CEE) countries on how address key HTA MDs with special focus transferability scientific evidence. Methods: As part COMED Ho...