SOCIOECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF COUNTRIES BASED ON THE PRESENCE OF HTA AGENCY

Abstract

Background: Broadly defined, health technology assessment (HTA) is the systematic evaluation of medical technologies. This approach takes in to account effectiveness of the technologies, social and ethical aspects and efficiency as well as. A large number of countries globally have not yet implemented the use of HTA because of varying reasons. Purpose: The study aims to show the correlation between the presence of official HTA body and the socioeconomic features. Material/Methods: In a 3-month period we used the method of document analysis from different sources regarding the presence of HTA bodies all over the world. A process for verification of the information used was developed and implemented. The same process was used to derive the presented information from the analysis. Results: About one in two countries have formal HTA process to inform decision making, in which they systematically collect data and consider the impacts of a particular health technology or intervention. However, almost à quarter of the studied countries are located in Europe, most of them (86%) have an official HTA agency that operates in the country. We found that 80% of HTA bodies all over the World are located in countries with high income rate and most of them are European. Conclusions It was found that it is possible to establish a correlation between the socio-economic parameters of a country and the existence of an active HTA agency in it.