This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our and .
In the lead up to the 3rd Annual Health Technology Assessment Conference, Professor Stephen Munn, Clinical Director, Transplantation at Auckland District Health Board joined us to talk about healthcare technology assessment.
My expertise in HTA comes from 9 years as the chair of a hospital-based HTA unit during which time we’ve received more than 75 submissions from a broad range of departments.
We’ve used an in-house scoring tool to help us compare dissimilar technologies and thereby provide robust advice to the hospital. Such advice has been, for the most part, accepted and acted upon. Recent examples of submissions include; alcohol caps to prevent central line associated blood stream infections, the use of FEIBA to reverse dabigatran induced coagulopathy, intra-operative radiation treatment for breat cancer, and cryoablation for atrial fibrillation.
I believe hospital-based HTA has an advantage over more remote analyses because it allows detailed pathway comparison that includes current and projected costs. Furthermore, it can consider local training and logistic issues that might not exist in other institutions.
Regulation is a barrier to some innovation – hopefully only the unsafe, less well proven, ineffective or eye-wateringly expensive forms of innovation!
Global HTA can help enormously with the academic part of HTA and it might prevent a lot of duplication. However, it cannot help with the detailed application of that HTA to the local circumstances, especially when there are competing technologies and a limited purse.
I will be speaking at the upcoming Health Technology Assessment Conference, taking place on 24th and 25th November in Sydney, on the topic “Hospital-based HTA: The Missing Link between Analysis and Decision-Making”. I’m looking forward to learning about novel health technologies and to hearing about industry attitude to comparative clinical studies.
Join Professor Munn at the event.
