Skip to 0 minutes and 8 seconds JIM LEWSEY: Today, decision-makers face many challenges in how best to allocate health care resources. These challenges present themselves across the globe in low, middle, and high-income countries. They also present at different levels of decision-making– at the national level by government health ministers, and at local levels, for example, by hospital management teams. What is the cause of these changes? Well, one important reason is that, in recent times, we’ve seen levels of technological innovation increase to unprecedented levels. Such innovation aims to improve health and health care for many disease areas and conditions. It is worth pointing out from the outset that technologies are not just drugs and medical devices.
Skip to 0 minutes and 49 seconds It also refers to new health policies, such as smoking bans, or a change in how health care service is organised or delivered, such as telemedicine. The demand for new technologies is high, especially if they are backed up by good evidence. And unfortunately, health services cannot sustain all new developments when working within a fixed budget, therefore, decision-makers faced difficult choices. This is where Health Technology Assessment, HTA comes in. HTA helps decision-makers make informed choices by interrogating the relevant information about new technologies.
Skip to 1 minute and 23 seconds Key questions that HTA addresses are does the technology work, does it work for all, is it safe, does it provide value for money, what should we compare the technology to, and who are all the stakeholders that need to be involved? In this course, you will learn about the fundamental concepts of HTA, and we will provide an overview of the different stages of the entire HTA process. If you are taking this course because you are considering a career in HTA, we hope that this is a useful first step for you. Career prospects in HTA are good and set to increase as more and more governments across the world set up HTA agencies to formally evaluate health technologies. Hello.
Skip to 2 minutes and 2 seconds My name is Dr. Jim Lewsey, and I work in the Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment– HEHTA for short– research group at the University of Glasgow. In this course, you will learn about the fundamental concepts of HTA and we’ll provide an overview of the different stages of the entire HTA process. If you are taking this course because you are interested in a career in HTA, we hope this is a helpful first step for you.
