Most of the material in this book was presented to an international symposium on technology assessment in health care which took place in Jerusalem in january 1994. Each country has its own health care system, its own philosophy, history, values and even code of ethics. The purpose of this book is to display the way health technology policy operates today in different countries, with emphasis on disparities and similarities. It concentrates on the practical aspects of applying technology assessment in health care, at both local and national levels. The book is divided in four sections: 1) The role of technology assessment in health care reform. How should technology be used? national perspectives. 2) The diffusion of medical technology: methodological differences. 3) The role of providers and insurers in technology assessment. 4) The role of professional organizations, universities and research centers in technology.

This book provides a robust set of health economic principles and methods to inform societal decisions in relation to research, reimbursement and regulation (pricing and monitoring of performance in practice). We provide a theoretical and practical framework that navigates to avoid common biases and suboptimal outcomes observed in recent and current practice of health economic analysis, as opposed to claiming to be comprehensive in covering all methods. Our aim is to facilitate efficient health system decision making processes in research, reimbursement and regulation, which promote constrained optimisation of community outcomes from a societal perspective given resource constraints, available technology and processes of technology assessment. Importantly, this includes identifying an efficient process to maximize the potential that arises from research and pricing in relation to existing technology under uncertainty, given current evidence and associated opportunity costs of investment. Principles and methods are identified and illustrated across health promotion, prevention and palliative care settings as well as treatment settings. Health policy implications are also highlighted.

This book analyses the factors that influence the development and implementation of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) from multiple perspectives. It investigates the development of HTA activities in decentralized countries with a specific focus on the analysis of healthcare professionals’ perceptions. Although these perceptions are highly relevant in terms of implementing HTA processes, especially at the local level, they are rarely captured, and require further investigation, which this book provides. In particular, HTA has been introduced as a support tool for reviewing and assessing the introduction and dissemination of healthcare technologies. The book discusses how individual and organisational factors affect knowledge production and translation, and their relevance in the context of HTA. Furthermore, it explores how HTA could be more successfully implemented in decentralized healthcare systems.

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.

For the first time, a single reference identifies medical technology assessment programs. A valuable guide to the field, this directory contains more than 60 profiles of programs that conduct and report on medical technology assessments. Each profile includes a listing of report citations for that program, and all the reports are indexed under major subject headings. Also included is a cross-listing of technology assessment report citations arranged by type of technology headings, brief descriptions of approximately 70 information sources of potential interest to technology assessors, and addresses and descriptions of 70 organizations with memberships, activities, publications, and other functions relevant to the medical technology assessment community.

This is the second book in the series of books that we edit on the Management of Medical Technology (MMT) published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. The fIrst book Managing Technology in Health Care offered a broad-brushed view of the topics involved in the new and exciting area of MMT that we have launched. A group of distinguished scholars contributed to the fIrst book. While working on the first book in the series, and on a variety of articles in MMT, we began to realize that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive and highly focused book which will introduce and define the area of MMT. In addition, we had just completed the two studies of MMT in American hospitals, and had a magnificent database fully analyzed. With three months left in the first author's sabbatical, and thanks to the encouragement from our editor at Kluwer, Gary Folven, we took to the task of writing this book. The merging in this book of the description of a new intellectual space, and the write-up of the results from our MMT studies have created a unique blend of very attractive reading material. The reader will find this book to be a fascinating adventure into a newly-created area of intellectual endeavor, coupled with fIndings about how the health care delivery system manages teclUlology. Regardless of the reader's background, this book will certainly be of interest, as it links the medical and business frameworks.

To accompany the hugely sccessful 'Methods for Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes 2e', this book is a thorough and rigourous discussion of the methodological principles and recent advances in the rapidly advancing field of theory and practice of economic evaluation in health care. Written by an internationally acclaimed group of authors, the book provides an in-depth discussion of the latest theoretical advances and gives comprehensive reviews of the available literature. The book covers the main areas of economic evaluation, including the methods for measuring costs and outcomes, the collection of data alongside clinical studies, ways of handling uncertainty, discounting and issues relating to the transferability of economic data. It is an ideal book for those studying economic evaluation on postgraduate or professional courses in health economics or public health.

Innovation in healthcare is currently a “hot” topic. Innovation allows us to think differently, to take risks and to develop ideas that are far better than existing solutions. Currently, there is no single book that covers all topics related to microelectronics, sensors, data, system integration and healthcare technology assessment in one reference. This book aims to critically evaluate current state-of-the-art technologies and provide readers with insights into developing new solutions. With contributions from a fully international team of experts across electrical engineering and biomedical fields, the book discusses how advances in sensing technology, computer science, communications systems and proteomics/genomics are influencing healthcare technology today.