health technology assessment

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a multidisciplinary process that evaluates the clinical effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness, and broader social and ethical implications of health technologies — including medicines, medical devices, diagnostics, and clinical procedures — to inform decisions about their adoption, reimbursement, and use within healthcare systems; HTA bodies such as the UK's NICE, Germany's IQWiG, France's HAS, and Canada's CADTH conduct systematic reviews of clinical evidence and economic models to determine whether new technologies offer sufficient additional benefit relative to existing treatments to justify their costs; HTA has become central to the governance of pharmaceutical markets in high-income countries and is increasingly being adopted by middle-income countries seeking to manage the growing costs of new medical technologies