Abstract
Health technology assessment has been used less in medical devices than in pharmaceuticals or therapeutic interventions up to now. The recent studies show that the problem (difficulties in the quantitative expression of the quality of life based on patient-reported data collected through generic questionnaires) is typical of diagnostic devices, while it can be solved within the complex assessment of the whole therapeutic process in the case of therapeutic medical devices.
The idea of utilization of operation research methods, above all the multiple criteria decision analysis, has brought some progress. Recently, HTA has been more and more used also at the level of individual hospitals or their consortia.
As compared with the traditional HTA model, this approach, called hospital-based health technology assessment (HB-HTA), has different objections and uses different methods. In hospitals, HTA methods are used in the field of strategic decisions, procurement and management of medical devices, and evaluation of general issues for the hospital management.
At present, medical devices are the field where HB-HTA is most beneficial. The paper summarizes various possible applications of HTA in hospitals, and presents examples of application of HTA in practice.