Health technology assessment in Catalonia: An overview of past and future perspectives

Objectives: The current and past situation of health technology assessment (HTA) in Catalonia is presented in this study. Methods: The approach used here is a historical review of facts and landmarks. Results: Spain has undergone radical change in many aspects, but the changes in healthcare provisio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of technology assessment in health care 2009-07, Vol.25 (S1), p.88-93
Main Authors: de Solà-Morales, Oriol, Granados, Alicia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Catalonia
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Delivery of Health Care - organization & administration
Devolution
Evaluation
Family physicians
Health care policy
Health technology assessment
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Hospitalization
Politics
Spain
Technology Assessment, Biomedical - history
Technology Assessment, Biomedical - trends
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Summary:Objectives: The current and past situation of health technology assessment (HTA) in Catalonia is presented in this study. Methods: The approach used here is a historical review of facts and landmarks. Results: Spain has undergone radical change in many aspects, but the changes in healthcare provision have been major indeed. Catalonia has had the ability to benefit from these changes and has been able to build upon professionals' experience and expertise to development a consistent HTA network and continuous evaluation paradigm. The early involvement of the Catalan Agency for Health Technology Assessment (CAHTA) in several relevant HTA international initiatives and the relationship of CAHTA and Research with other HTA agencies in Spain is also stressed. Conclusions: HTA is currently of common use in Catalonia for decision making at different levels. Now emphasis has to be put on the coming challenges that the HTA community will have to face in the coming years: uncontrolled demand, capacity scarcity, a rapidly evolving knowledge frontier, and insufficient input from the economic sphere into evaluations.
ISSN:0266-4623
1471-6348
DOI:10.1017/S0266462309090473