Assessing health technologies through HTA: requisites, methods, challenges and perspectives

Issues/problem Health Technology Assessment (HTA) allows a multidisciplinary evaluation of health technologies and is one of the methods available for decision-making. Description of the problem: Technology Assessment has developed in the 1970s and has been applied to fields other than medicine before being deeply used to assess health technologies. With respect to them, HTA should rest on evidence and data and should be adapted in order to be useful to assess the value of different health technologies. Results HTA has been successfully applied to the analysis of the introduction of drugs, medical devices and equipment. As a result, several reports are currently available. They have been commonly provided by institutional organizations and may be assessed with respect to international checklists and recommendations which have been released by networks working in the field of HTA. Notwithstanding the effort of international networks in standardizing HTA reports, Public Health topics remain considerably under investigated. The change in population health need together with the economic crisis suggest that HTA should be implemented in order to better allocate resources, in particular in the field of preventive and Public Health programs which may allow great benefit at population level. Lessons HTA could represent an important tool to tackle Public Health topics. Notwithstanding researchers as well as decision makers and companies should work together in order to provide robust evidence and chance for methods development and standardization.