A timely work describing how localized hospital-based health technology assessment (HB-HTA) complements general, ‘arms-length’ HTA agency efforts, and what has been the collective global impact of HB-HTA across the globe. While HB-HTA has gained significant momentum over the past few years, expertise in the field, and information on the operation and organization of HB-HTA, has been scattered. This book serves to bring this information together to inform those who are currently working in the field of HTA at the hospital, regional, national or global level. In addition, this book is intended for decision-makers and policy-makers with a stake in determining the uptake and decommissioning of new and established technologies in the hospital setting. HTA has traditionally been performed at the National/Regional level by HTA Agencies, typically linked to governments. Yet hospitals are the main entry door for most health technologies (HTs). Hospital decision-makers must undertake multiple high stakes investment and disinvestment decisions annually for innovative HTs, usually without adequate information. Despite the existence of arms-length HTA Agencies, inadequate information is available to hospital decision-makers either because relevant HTA reports are not yet released at the time of entry of new technologies to the field, or because even when the report exists, the information contained is insufficient to clarify the contextualized informational needs of hospital decision makers. Therefore, there has recently been a rising trend toward hospital-based HTA units and programs. These units/programs complement the work of National/Regional HTA Agencies by providing the key and relevant evidence needed by hospital decision makers in their specific hospital context, and within required decision-making timelines. The emergence of HB-HTA is creating a comprehensive HTA ecosystem across health care levels, which creates better bridges for knowledge translation through relevance and timeliness.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

Management of Medical Technology: A Primer for Clinical Engineers introduces and examines the functions and activities of clinical engineering within the medical environment of the modern hospital. The book provides insight into the role that clinical engineers play in the management of medical technology. Topics covered include the history, job functions, and the professionalization of clinical engineering; safety in the clinical environment; management of hospital equipment; assessment and acquisition of medical technologies; preparation of a business plan for the clinical engineering department; and the moral and ethical issues that surround the delivery of health-care. Clinical engineers and biomedical engineers will find the book as a great reference material.

This book provides an introduction to decision analytic cost-effectiveness modelling, giving the theoretical and practical knowledge required to design and implement analyses that meet the methodological standards of health technology assessment organisations. The book guides you through building a decision tree and Markov model and, importantly, shows how the results of cost-effectiveness analyses are interpreted. Given the complex nature of cost-effectiveness modelling and the often unfamiliar language that runs alongside it, we wanted to make this book as accessible as possible whilst still providing a comprehensive, in-depth, practical guide that reflects the state of the art – that includes the most recent developments in cost-effectiveness modelling. Although the nature of cost effectiveness modelling means that some parts are inevitably quite technical, across the 13 chapters we have broken down explanations of theory and methods into bite-sized pieces that you can work through at your own pace; we have provided explanations of terms and methods as we use them. Importantly, the exercises and online workbooks allow you to test your skills and understanding as you go along.

Healthcare Technology Management Systems provides a model for implementing an effective healthcare technology management (HTM) system in hospitals and healthcare provider settings, as well as promoting a new analysis of hospital organization for decision-making regarding technology. Despite healthcare complexity and challenges, current models of management and organization of technology in hospitals still has evolved over those established 40-50 years ago, according to totally different circumstances and technologies available now. The current health context based on new technologies demands working with an updated model of management and organization, which requires a re-engineering perspective to achieve appropriate levels of clinical effectiveness, efficiency, safety and quality. Healthcare Technology Management Systems presents best practices for implementing procedures for effective technology management focused on human resources, as well as aspects related to liability, and the appropriate procedures for implementation. - Presents a new model for hospital organization for Clinical Engineers and administrators to implement Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) - Understand how to implement Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) within all types of organizations, including Human Resource impact, Technology Policy and Regulations, Health Technology Planning (HTP) and Acquisition, as well as Asset and Risk Management - Transfer of knowledge from applied research in CE, HTM, HTP and HTA, from award-winning authors who are active in international health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) and International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE)

This book disentangles the issues in connection with the advancement of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and its interface with health policy. It highlights the factors that should shape its progress in the near future. Interdisciplinary and critical views from a number of professionals are put together in a prescient order to cast some light and make recommendations as to the next steps HTA should take to be fit for purpose. A wealth of documents dealing with HTA have been published over the last three decades. HTA allegedly is one of the bedrocks of regulation and medical decision making. However, counter vailing visions contend that geographical variations in the role that HTA is actually playing within countries pinpoints specific room for improvement. Given our social preferences, cherry-picking HTA’s features and successes over the last decades moves it away from its possibility frontier. Some of the most noteworthy hindrances that HTA faces, in several countries, to making headway towards its consolidation as an efficient tool for regulation and decision making are as follows: insufficient resources, delays in assessment, inadequate priority setting, regulatory capture, public distrust, actual influence on regulatory decisions, the need for strengthening international cooperation and harmony, the lack of sound and consistent assessments of diagnostic tests, medical devices and surgical innovations and limited dissemination. Time has come for HTA to take a renewed stand. There is a pressing need to submit HTA to in-depth critical scrutiny.