DACEHTA, Denmark
HTA is a multidisciplinary process that summarises information about the medical, social, economic, and ethical issues related to the use of health technology in a systematic, transparent, unbiased, robust manner. Its aim is to inform the formulation of safe, effective health policies that are patient focused and seek to achieve best value. Despite its policy goals, HTA must always be firmly rooted in research and scientific methods.
The content of HTA
HTA is currently being done in a lot of different ways, partly due to political demands and traditions in different countries. In some places HTAs consist of systematic reviews and economic evaluations while other organisations do more broad-spectred assessments. However, the concept of HTA has traditionally been defined by multidisciplinarity and inclusion of a wide number of issues, which can contribute to assessment of prerequisites / conditions for and consequences of the use of technologies in health care.
HTA vs. Health Technology Appraisal
HTA is a general term which is used in all organisations that are working with HTA, whereas Health Technology appraisal seems to be used mainly in the UK. The two terms relates to the fact that HTA when it successfully meets its aim of informing policy is taken into a political process with (possible) recommendations and policy advice. In some countries, UK being the best example, the actual assessment and the policy advice is (organisationally) separated into assessment (the scientific evaluation) and appraisal (the policy advice or perhaps even the actual policy based on the assessment). In other countries the term HTA also include the process of recommending and giving policy advice, even though the active involvement in this part of the policy process is limited in most HTA-organisations.