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 HTAs 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.

Health Technology Assessment and its Interface with Regulation, Policy and Management.- Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and the Incentives to Innovation in the Life Cycle of a Health Technology.- The Wisdom Tooth of Health Technology Assessment.- Regaining Health Technology Assessment from Oblivion: Improving and Integrating Regulation of Drugs, Medical Devices, Diagnostic Tests and Surgical Innovations.- Four Issues in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Health Technology Assessment: a View from the Touch-line.- Measuring QALYs for HTA and Health Policy Decision Making: Bridging the Gap Between Power and ACT.- What Health Technology Assessment System Do we Really Need? A Critical Review of the Current Situation of Health Technology Assessment in Five European Countries.- The Final Stretch? How Shared Decision Making Extends Health Technology Assessment to Meet Patient Preference.- Dissemination of Health Technology Assessment.