The need to progress and innovate in health technology assessment (HTA) is a must in a continuously changing environment. The HTAi Policy Forum reflected on two specific areas for development where it was thought there was need for careful consideration and deliberation during the main annual meeting in February 2016. The study by Husereau et al. (1) in this journal presents the discussions res...

OBJECTIVES The history of health technology assessment (HTA) in Mexico is examined, starting with the efforts to incorporate this topic into the policy agenda and culminating with the recent creation of a specialized public agency. METHODS Information was gathered through a bibliographic search and interviews with actors involved in HTA in Mexico. RESULTS HTA efforts were developed in Mexic...

AIM To provide insights into the capacity to conduct health technology assessment (HTA) in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE), taking account of technical, financial, networking, and human resources. METHODS An e-mail survey of 257 CESEE key informants involved in HTA was undertaken between March and April 2014. Contact e-mail addresses were identified from the internet. The s...

OBJECTIVE To explore perceptions of the use of health technology assessment (HTA) in the Galician public health system, identify opinions on the usefulness of the products and services developed by the Galician Health Technology Assessment Agency (avalia-t), and determine the barriers and facilitators to the transfer of results to clinical practice. METHOD We performed a qualitative study bas...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Scientific and technological development is crucial for advancing the Brazilian health system and for promoting quality of life. The way in which the Brazilian Ministry of Health has supported clinical research to provide autonomy, self-sufficiency, competitiveness and innovation for the healthcare industrial production complex, in accordance with the National Policy on Sc...

The Chilean health system has not been completely oblivious to health technology assessment (HTA). In fact, significant advances in the areas of health prioritization using criteria of disease burden, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness among others, can be acknowledged. The introduction of the reform of Explicit Health Guarantees (GES) has been an important milestone in this arena, allowing t...

The article by Daniels and colleagues on expanding the scope of health technology assessment (HTA) to embrace ethical analysis has received endorsement and criticism from commentators in this journal. Referring to this debate, we examine in this article the extent and locus of ethical analysis in HTA processes. An expansion/no-expansion framing of HTA is, in our view, not very fruitful. We argu...

OBJECTIVES Health technology assessment (HTA) has to innovate to best support changing health system environments and to help provide access to valuable innovation under fiscal constraint. METHODS Issues associated with changing HTA paradigms were identified through scoping and explored through deliberation at a meeting of industry and HTA leaders. RESULTS Five broad areas of change (engage...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to review and compare types of reimbursement recommendations for orphan drugs issued by eight European health technology assessment (HTA) agencies and the reimbursement status of these drugs in the corresponding countries. Separate calculations were also performed for three sub-groups: ultra-orphan drugs, oncology orphan drugs and other (non-ultra, non-oncol...

BACKGROUND In the field of health technology assessment (HTA), there are several approaches that can be used for ethical analysis. However, there is a scarcity of literature that critically evaluates and compares the strength and weaknesses of these approaches when they are applied in practice. In this paper, we analyse the applicability of some selected approaches for addressing ethical issues...