The impact of health technology assessments: an international comparison

With the rising costs of health care due to an ageing population and a growing number of new and expensive technologies, an increasing number of countries have implemented health technology assessments (HTAs) as a means of informing the decision process based on clinical and economic evidence. In an environment where resources are scarce, HTA agencies’ objective is to ensure access to safe and effective medicines, while managing health care expenditure in an efficient way by reimbursing clinically cost-effective treatments. In this discourse, pharmaceutical products are the main – but by no means the only – subjects of such appraisals.