Basic Principles of Health Technology Assessment, Economic Evaluation, and Costing of Healthcare Programs

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Rosanna Tarricone ◽  
Aleksandra Torbica
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Zisis ◽  
Panagiota Naoum ◽  
Kostas Athanasakis

Abstract Objective To classify, analyze, and compare published guidelines for economic evaluation within health technology assessment (HTA) in European countries and highlight differences and similarities. Methods We performed a literature review to identify published guidance for the conduct and assessment of economic evaluation studies that are undertaken within the context of HTA processes in European countries. Organizations and working groups were identified via the ISPOR, INAHTA, and EUnetHTA databases. Following the identification of official documents, we performed a qualitative content analysis to highlight discrepancies or common practices under the following categories: comparator, perspective on costs/benefits, time horizon, economic evaluation method, instrument used for utility measurement, outcome measure, source for efficacy, modeling, sensitivity analysis, discounting, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. Results A total of nineteen guidance documents were identified (in English) providing data for the analysis in nineteen countries. The comparative content analysis identified common practices in most countries regarding the approaches to the choice of comparator, source of data, the preferred economic evaluation method, the option for a lifetime analytical horizon, discounting, and the choice of key outcome measure—for which, most countries recommend the use of the EQ-5D instrument. Differences were mainly found in the choice of perspective, dealing with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, the use of end points, and the required use of modeling. Conclusions The use of economic evaluation constitutes one of the key pillars of the HTA process in Europe. Although a methodological convergence has occurred during the last few years, notable differences still remain.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Husereau ◽  
Deborah A. Marshall ◽  
Adrian R. Levy ◽  
Stuart Peacock ◽  
Jeffrey S. Hoch

Background: Many jurisdictions delivering health care, including Canada, have developed guidance for conducting economic evaluation, often in the service of larger health technology assessment (HTA) and reimbursement processes. Like any health intervention, personalized medical (PM) interventions have costs and consequences that must be considered by reimbursement authorities with limited resources. However, current approaches to economic evaluation to support decision making have been largely developed from population-based approaches to therapy—that is, evaluating the costs and consequences of single interventions across single populations. This raises the issue as to whether these methods, as they are or more refined, are adequate to address more targeted approaches to therapy, or whether a new paradigm for assessing value in PM is required.Objectives: We describe specific issues relevant to the economic evaluation of diagnostics-based PM and assess whether current guidance for economic evaluation is sufficient to support decision making for PM interventions.Methods: Issues were identified through literature review and informal interviews with national and international experts (n = 10) in these analyses. This article elaborates on findings and discussion at a workshop held in Ottawa, Canada, in January 2012.Results: Specific issues related to better guiding economic evaluation of personalized medicine interventions include: how study questions are developed, populations are characterized, comparators are defined, effectiveness is evaluated, outcomes are valued and how resources are measured. Diagnostics-based PM also highlights the need for analyses outside of economic evaluation to support decision making.Conclusions: The consensus of this group of experts is that the economic evaluation of diagnostics-based PM may not require a new paradigm. However, greater complexity means that existing approaches and tools may require improvement to undertake these more analyses.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 299-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan E. Lim ◽  
Daria O'Reilly ◽  
Jean-Eric Tarride ◽  
Natasha Burke ◽  
Ilia L. Ferrusi ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Vladimir Vukovic ◽  
Carlo Favaretti ◽  
Walter Ricciardi ◽  
Chiara de Waure

Objectives:Evaluation is crucial for integration of e-Health/m-Health into healthcare systems and health technology assessment (HTA) could offer sound methodological basis for these evaluations. Aim of this study was to look for HTA reports on e-Health/m-Health technologies and to analyze their transparency, consistency and thoroughness, with the goal to detect areas that need improvement.Methods:PubMed, ISI-WOS, and University of York – Centre for Reviews and Dissemination–electronic databases were searched to identify reports on e-Health/m-Health technologies, published up until April 1, 2016. The International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA) checklist was used to evaluate transparency and consistency of included reports. Thoroughness was assessed by checking the presence of domains suggested by the European network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) HTA Core Model.Results:Twenty-eight reports published between 1999 and 2015 were included. Most were delivered by non-European countries (71.4 percent) and only 35.7 percent were classified as full reports. All the HTA reports defined the scope of research whereas more than 80 percent provided author details, summary, discussed findings, and conclusion. On the contrary, policy and research questions were clearly defined in around 30 percent and 50 percent of reports. With respect to the EUnetHTA Core Model, around 70 percent of reports dealt with effectiveness and economic evaluation, more than 50 percent described health problem and approximately 40 percent organizational and social aspects.Conclusions:E-Health/m-Health technologies are increasingly present in the field of HTA. Yet, our review identified several missing elements. Most of the reports failed to respond to relevant assessment components, especially ethical, social and organizational implications.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. 168-169
Author(s):  
Francesco Faggiano ◽  
Martina Andellini ◽  
Federico Nocchi ◽  
Carlo Capussotto ◽  
Francesca Sabusco ◽  
...  

INTRODUCTION:The purpose of the study was to evaluate different type and manufacturers of intensive care ventilators in order to support the healthcare decision-making process about the choice to adopt the best available technology for ventilation of pediatric patient in intensive care units at Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital.METHODS:The technology assessment process was developed by using a new methodology, the Decision-oriented Health Technology Assessment (HTA) (DoHTA), a new implementation of the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) CoreModel, integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (1). A literature review was carried out to gather evidence on safety and overall effectiveness of different kind of intensive care ventilators, with several ventilation modalities and strategies. The synthesis of scientific evidence, and results of the specific context analysis resulted in the definition of components of the decisional hierarchy structure, consisting in detailed characteristics of the technology's performances covering the aspects on feasibility, safety, efficacy, costs, and organizational and technical characteristics of the technology. A subgroup of these indicators has been included in a checklist form for the evaluation of different type and manufacturers of intensive care ventilators, each of which was tested in three independent runs performed in three different departments. In addition, an economic evaluation was also carried out.RESULTS:Preliminary DoHTA results showed that the domains with the highest impacts within the evaluation are safety and clinical effectiveness (34.8 percent and 25.7 percent, respectively) followed by organizational aspects, technical characteristics of technology and costs and economic evaluation. The final objective is to define the alternatives’ ranking through a comparison between alternative technologies’ performances.CONCLUSIONS:The technology assessment project allowed to identify strengths and limits of the most recent intensive care ventilator’ models in the specific contexts of use by involving all health professionals interested, and eventually identify the best option for the hospital.


Author(s):  
Andrea Gabrio ◽  
Gianluca Baio ◽  
Andrea Manca

The evidence produced by healthcare economic evaluation studies is a key component of any Health Technology Assessment (HTA) process designed to inform resource allocation decisions in a budget-limited context. To improve the quality (and harmonize the generation process) of such evidence, many HTA agencies have established methodological guidelines describing the normative framework inspiring their decision-making process. The information requirements that economic evaluation analyses for HTA must satisfy typically involve the use of complex quantitative syntheses of multiple available datasets, handling mixtures of aggregate and patient-level information, and the use of sophisticated statistical models for the analysis of non-Normal data (e.g., time-to-event, quality of life and costs). Much of the recent methodological research in economic evaluation for healthcare has developed in response to these needs, in terms of sound statistical decision-theoretic foundations, and is increasingly being formulated within a Bayesian paradigm. The rationale for this preference lies in the fact that by taking a probabilistic approach, based on decision rules and available information, a Bayesian economic evaluation study can explicitly account for relevant sources of uncertainty in the decision process and produce information to identify an “optimal” course of actions. Moreover, the Bayesian approach naturally allows the incorporation of an element of judgment or evidence from different sources (e.g., expert opinion or multiple studies) into the analysis. This is particularly important when, as often occurs in economic evaluation for HTA, the evidence base is sparse and requires some inevitable mathematical modeling to bridge the gaps in the available data. The availability of free and open source software in the last two decades has greatly reduced the computational costs and facilitated the application of Bayesian methods and has the potential to improve the work of modelers and regulators alike, thus advancing the fields of economic evaluation of healthcare interventions. This chapter provides an overview of the areas where Bayesian methods have contributed to the address the methodological needs that stem from the normative framework adopted by a number of HTA agencies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-372
Author(s):  
Neill Booth

AbstractObjectivesProceeding from a basic concept underpinning economic evaluation, opportunity cost, this study aims to explain how different approaches to economics diverge quite dramatically in their ideas of what constitutes appropriate valuation, both in principle and practice. Because the concept of opportunity cost does not inherently specify how valuation should be undertaken or specify how appropriate any economic value framework (EVF) might be, the three main economics-based approaches to providing evidence about value for health technology assessment are described.MethodsThis paper describes how the three main EVFs—namely, the extra-welfarist, welfarist, and classical—are most typically understood, applied, and promoted. It then provides clarification and assessment of related concepts and terminology.ResultsAlthough EVFs differ, certain underlying characteristics of valuation were identified as fundamental to all approaches to economic evaluation in practice. The study also suggests that some of the rhetoric and terms employed in relation to the extra-welfarist approach are not wholly justified and, further, that only the welfarist approach ensures adherence to welfare-economic principles. Finally, deliberative analysis, especially when connected with a classical economic approach, can serve as a useful supplement to other analytical approaches.ConclusionsAll three approaches to economic evaluation have something to offer assessment processes, but they all display limitations too. Therefore, the author concludes that the language of economic evaluation should be used with sufficient humility to prevent overselling of EVFs, especially with regard to the qualities of evidence they provide for priority setting processes.


2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francois Schubert

Increasingly, health technology assessment (HTA) is used to aid decisions on the reimbursement of pharmaceuticals or recommendations for their use. The pharmaceutical industry seeks to work in partnership with HTA agencies; however, this presents a number of challenges. Clinical trials will need to include appropriate measures that capture economic and patient benefits as well as relevant clinical endpoints, and the industry will want to seek international harmonization of the many guidelines for economic evaluation. The problem of demonstrating cost-effectiveness of a product before it is available for use must be addressed, possibly by conditional reimbursement to allow collection of real world evidence. It is also important that reimbursement decision makers minimize bias, play fair, and adhere to the written rules they issue. If the industry fairly demonstrates the value of a product using the best available evidence, HTA agencies should be transparent in the rationale for their recommendations.


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