Introduction: Assessment of ethics issues is an important part of health technology assessments (HTA). However, in terms of existence of quality assessment tools, ethics for HTA is methodologically underdeveloped in comparison to other areas of HTA, such as clinical or cost effectiveness. Objective: To methodologically advance ethics for HTA by: (1) proposing and elaborating Q-SEA, the first in...

The opportunity cost of inappropriate health policy decisions is greater in Central and Eastern European (CEE) compared with Western European (WE) countries because of poorer population health and more limited healthcare resources. Application of health technology assessment (HTA) prior to healthcare financing decisions can improve the allocative efficiency of scarce resources. However, few CEE...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the stages toward recognition and implementation of health technology assessment (HTA). METHODS System analysis of structures and institutions and their use of HTA. RESULTS Austria is a latecomer in implementing evaluations/HTA as decision support. It can to a certain degree absorb the increasing international knowledge. Austria ...

This study provides a sociological commentary on the current debates within health technology assessment (HTA), specifically in response to the approaches taken in France, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It argues that HTA is part of a wider reflexive innovation system that seeks to order current and prospective technologies. The study discusses the socio-political process of H...

This volume, Value in Health Regional Issues (ViHRI) Volume 12, is the first Asia issue since our journal was awarded with a higher international journal standard by being indexed in MEDLINE/ PubMed. The achievement may not have been possible without the great contributions made by the authors of all of the previously published articles. This particular issue covers studies from the Asia-Pacifi...

Although genome-wide expression analysis has become a routine tool for gaining insight into molecular mechanisms, extraction of information remains a major challenge. It has been unclear why standard statistical methods, such as the t-test and ANOVA, often lead to low levels of reproducibility, how likely applying fold-change cutoffs to enhance reproducibility is to miss key signals, and how ad...

Hyalinizing trabecular adenoma (HTA) of the thyroid, characterized by the presence of a trabecular-alveolar growth pattern and marked intratrabecular hyalinization, was initially described 100 years ago. In 1987, Carney et al. introduced the term HTA to describe this rare tumor of the thyroid composed of polygonal, oval, and spindle cells arranged in a trabecular pattern and separated by a hyal...

The use of health technology assessment (HTA) to inform policy-making is established in most developed countries. Compared to licensing agencies, HTA agencies have different interests and, therefore, different evidence requirements. Criteria for coverage or reimbursement decisions on pharmaceutical compounds vary; however, it is common to include, as part of the HTA, a comparative effectiveness...

OBJECTIVE Middle-income countries are often referred to as developing or emerging economies and face multiple challenges of severe financial stresses in their health care sectors, and high disease burden. The objective of this study is to provide an overview of how health technology assessment (HTA) is used and organized in selected middle-income countries and its role in the process of pharmac...

OBJECTIVES This study examines the content and role of ethical analysis in health technology assessment (HTA) and horizon scanning publications. It proposes that ethical analysis in HTA is of at least two different types: an ethics of HTA and an ethics in HTA. METHODS I examine the critical differences between these approaches through the examples of the analysis of genetic screening for brea...