EUnetHTA Adaptation Glossary (beta)

Policy

These terms may be used as synonyms in many situations, specially by non-native English-speakers. In some languages, the translation for guideline, guidance and protocol may refer to the concept of Clinical Practice Guidelines and thus be completely interchangeable. However, the terms may have slightly different meanings specially concerning the degree of legal-binding. In some countries a guideline has to be followed, otherwise some kind of sanctions may be the consequence (i.e. not reimbursement of a procedure). Guidance can be interpreted as “orientation”, i.e.

For this term I cannot figure many conflicts or misunderstanding in its use. To my knowledge it is predominantly used according to existing definitions. Sometimes it might be confused with “equality” or with “justice”. To my knowledge most of HTA-reports to date did not deal with “Equity” at least formally or in a systematic way.

The terms “effectiveness” and “efficacy” seem to be used as synonyms and to be quite interchangeable, despite formal conceptual differences between both. To my knowledge this might be due to translation difficulties (in German for example “Efficacy” is usually translated as “Wirksamkeit” and “Effectiveness” as “Wirksamkeit unter Alltagsbedingungen”, which is then too often shortened leaving “Wirksamkeit” alone again). The confusion might be also due to lack of clarity on interpreting whether the conditions of a trial were so far a way from conditions in every day practice.

Setting

In general “Setting” seems to be understood as the place where something occurs. The “setting” for example is the where a technology is implemented.
There seems to be some confusion for this term since sometimes it seems to be a geographical concept (national setting, regional setting, local setting), sometimes seems to be a concept referred to the type of health system (NHS-setting, SHI-setting) and sometimes a concept related to the type of care or institution (ambulatory setting, hospital setting, academic setting).

Core model can be understood as the minimum components of an HTA report, and thus may vary from country to country. Core model can be also understood as the agreement on the minimum components of an HTA-report from an international perspective, thus representing a kind of European Standard. For Core-model definitions please refer to the EUnetHTA definition.

The term commissioning can be applied to both: commissioning an HTA report or commissioning services.