EUnetHTA Adaptation Glossary (beta)

Issue

Rapid reviews are a term used to group a variety of health technology assessment procedures that has to be performed in a reduced time-frame. If a usual systematic review takes one year or more for at least two full time people, these kinds of rapid reviews are delivered in 6 months or less. The purpose of the rapid reviews is to give support to relatively urgent health policy decision making.

Different types of Rapid reviews

Rapid Review

This usually means a draft, more than a summary or abstract of a main report. “Quick view” might reflect better if the objective is to express the main issues of the report.

Mini HTA

This seems to be a small “concentrated” resumé assessment. It does not imply a “not so important” HTA.

Pre-assessment

This really means a draft or a first approach to a subject. It may mean an already performed “pilot study”, but usually means a draft of something to be thoroughly performed later on.

Pre-assessment

In AHTAPol pre-assessment constitutes the initial stage in the procedure of developing HTA report (that has been recently implemented by the Order of the Director of the AHTAPol of the 27th of March 2007).

Pre-assessment of health technology is a summary of information, that is relevant for making a recommendation regarding terms of funding specific technology from public sources, for example:

Rapid review is an HTA report produced through an accelerated process. The form and contents of the review may vary according to the needs of stakeholders and availability of resources. A rapid review addresses only select aspects of a full HTA, and the methods used to gather and analyse the data may be limited. Rapid reviews may be limited in one or more ways:

Question framing: the scope of the assessment may be narrowed to a narrow aspect

Identifying relevant literature: the search may be based only on databases on systematic reviews or HTA reports

Rapid review (or rapid HTA or rapid assessment) is a designation of HTAs that are done within a shorter timeframe than “regular” HTAs. However, it is not easy to give a clear definition since rapid has been used as a concept for HTAs done within the time frame of a few days and up to a year.

Mini HTA