La valutazione delle tecnologie sanitarie. Per un’equa allocazione delle risorse

[Autom. eng. transl.] Health systems are called to address the problem of satisfying growing care needs with a limited amount of resources. This situation implies the need to optimize the use of resources at all levels. In this context, a multidisciplinary research area known as Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has developed at an international level, aimed at assessing, under different perspectives (clinical, economic, social, legal, ethical, political, psychological, etc.). ), the use of technologies in the health sector. The main objective is to support health policy decisions. A similar area of research has taken on an increasingly important role in many European and North American hospital organizations to the point of currently representing perhaps the most functional support to company management in decisions regarding the introduction and use of health technologies . The contribution is aimed at introducing and arguing the concept of HTA, the elements, the objectives, the problems and, above all, laying the foundations for an articulated reflection on the ethical aspects, which, although scarcely debated in the literature, represent a constitutive element health technology assessment.