A conceptual framework, called Innovation of Health Technology Assessment Methods (IHTAM), has been developed to facilitate the understanding of how to innovate methods of health technology assessment (HTA). However, the framework applicability has not been evaluated in practice. Hence, we aimed to explore framework applicability in three cases of method innovation that are part of the HTx project and to develop a roadmap to improve framework applicability.

To assess the health technology assessment (HTA) process in Greece from its establishment in 2018 until 2023 in terms of timeliness and productivity.

The Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) 2023 Annual Meeting included a novel "fishbowl" session intended to 1) probe the role of HTA in the emergence of generative pretrained transformer (GPT) large language models (LLMs) into health care and 2) demonstrate the semistructured, interactive fishbowl process applied to an emerging "hot topic" by diverse international participants.

In many countries, the economics domain forms a routine part of health technology assessments (HTA) next to analyzing the comparative effectiveness and safety of a technology. The method applied most often is economic evaluation, such as cost-effectiveness analysis, which is supposed to support the efficient use of resources. In Austria, economic evaluation has played a negligible role in HTA and reimbursement decisions, even though the country faces the same public healthcare sustainability challenges as others. In this commentary, we argue that while health economics will need to play a more active role in HTA-related decision support to deal with those challenges, current approaches in other countries may have to be broadened to fit the Austrian context. We are outlining four arguments to underpin this perspective: First, economic evaluations (in their current form) are of limited benefit for supporting reimbursement decisions of new high-priced technologies. Second, a broader variety of health economic methods is needed to address the scope of technologies. Third, applying health economic methods requires a reflection on their underlying values. Finally, health economics within HTA needs to go beyond microeconomic analysis of interventions. We are suggesting several alternative methods and approaches, encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and experimenting with methods developed in the academic context but rarely applied in routine HTA. Although some of our topics are unique to Austria, others may equally apply to other healthcare systems. With our thoughts, we aim to stimulate discussions for further developing health economics within HTA in Austria and internationally.

The sandbox approach, developed in the financial technologies sector, creates an environment to collaboratively develop and test innovative new products, methods and regulatory approaches, separated from business as usual. It has been used in health care to encourage innovation in response to emerging challenges, but, until recently, has not been used in health technology assessment (HTA). This article summarizes our learnings from using the sandbox approach to address three challenges facing HTA organizations and to identify implications for the use of this approach in HTA.

The roles and potential value of patient preference (PP) data in health technology assessment (HTA) remain to be fully realized despite an expanding literature and various efforts to establish their utility. This article reports lessons learned through a series of collaborative workshops with HTA representatives, organized by the Health Technology Assessment International's Patient Preferences Project Subcommittee.

Health technology assessment (HTA) organizations generate guidelines to inform healthcare practices toward improved health outcomes. This review sought to identify and classify outcomes of guidelines from HTA organizations within published research.

The primary objectives of this umbrella review were to (a) quantify the relative importance, of "severity" and "rarity" criteria in health resource allocation; and (b) analyze the contextual factors influencing the relative importance. The secondary objective was to examine how "severity" and "rarity" criteria are defined.

To describe the type of evidence and the clinical benefit of cancer medicines assessed for funding in Australia by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) and to assess it with the European Society of Medical Oncology Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale version 1.1 (ESMO-MCBS).

Healthcare disinvestment requires multi-level decision-making, and early stakeholder engagement is essential to facilitate implementation and acceptance. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of Malaysian healthcare stakeholders to disinvestment initiatives as well as identify disinvestment activities in the country.

International development agendas increasingly push for access to healthcare for all through universal healthcare coverage. Health economic evaluations and health technology assessment (HTA) could provide evidence to support this but do not routinely incorporate consideration of equitable access.

To synthesize the results of cost-effectiveness studies of different triage tests in comparison to repeat cytology for women with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US) or low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) results.

The decision-making (DM) process in public administration is the subject of research from different perspectives and disciplines. Evidence-based policies, such as health technology assessment (HTA), are not the only support on which public policies are designed. During the COVID-19 pandemic WHO, national and subnational institutions developed HTA reports to guide DM. Despite this, inadequate variability was observed in the health technologies recommended and reimbursed by different provincial Health Ministries in a federally organized developing country like Argentina. The processes and results of DM on health technologies for COVID-19 in Health Ministries of Argentina were inquired.

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) practitioners recognize the significance of qualitative methodologies that focus on how a technology is feasible, meaningfulness, acceptable, and equitable. This mapping aimed to delineate the frameworks employed to synthesize qualitative evidence and assess the quality of synthesis in HTA .

Countries frequently use health technology assessment (HTA) to set priorities for introducing new interventions or evaluating existing interventions; however, applying the tool effectively is heavily dependent on a country's resources and capacity. Infrastructure and data, technical expertise, broad stakeholder involvement, and financial support are required to improve HTA processes. In the Asia-Pacific, HTAsiaLink was established to facilitate this practice, but strengthening and legitimizing this organization are needed to maximize its potential to support HTA institutionalization in the region. To realize this objective, HTAsiaLink can serve as a center of excellence while providing experiential learning and sharing information. As a learning hub, HTAsiaLink can share resources-particularly data-that can contribute to joint HTAs as done in the European Union and strengthen capacity in countries needing to develop their HTA expertise.

Evaluating the impact of patient involvement in health technology assessments (HTA) may help improve practices and avoid ineffective activities. Evaluation, however, continues to be infrequent, inconsistent, and often only relates to process quantity or quality. The Patient and Citizen Involvement in HTA Interest Group (PCIG) within Health Technology Assessment International set out to contextualize this impact to support evaluation.

Since its inception, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has typically determined the value of a technology by collecting information derived from randomized clinical trials (RCTs), in line with the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM). However, data from RCTs did not constitute the sole source of information, as other types of evidence (such as primary qualitative research) have often been utilized. Recent advances in both generating and collecting other types of evidence are broadening the landscape of evidence, adding complexity to the discussion of "robustness of evidence." What are the consequences of these recent developments for the methodology and conduct of HTA, the HTA community, and its ethical commitments? The aim of this article is to explore some ethical challenges that are emerging in the current evolving evidence landscape, particularly changes in evidence generation and collection (e.g., diversification of data sources), and shifting standards of evidence in the field of HTA (e.g., increasing acceptability of evidence that is thought of as lower quality). Our conclusion is that deciding how to best maintain trustworthiness is common to all these issues.

The costs of low back pain (LBP) are complex and difficult to estimate. This study aims to adapt the Cost for Patients Questionnaire (CoPaQ) for use in LBP populations.

Although collaboration is an intensive way of working together, it is essential for such efforts to achieve shared goals. Health technology assessment (HTA) is transdisciplinary and has an important history of collaboration, with collaboration featuring increasingly in the strategic plans of HTA bodies and stakeholders. Collaboration can be between HTA bodies and between HTA bodies and other stakeholders-most notably regulators but increasingly payers, patient and caregiver organizations, clinicians-clinical societies, and academia. The 2024 HTAi Global Policy Forum (GPF) discussed collaborations involving HTA bodies, reviewing existing and previous collaborations to see what has worked and what can be learned. Core discussion themes included: (i) determining the collaboration purpose is essential but may be dynamic, changing over time; (ii) choosing the collaboration topic takes time, requiring upfront investment and stakeholder mapping; (iii) inviting the right participants and treating them equally is important, including those who can impact HTA, those who will be impacted by HTA and those who bring new information; (iv) collaborations need clear governance, defined roles, responsibilities, metrics, and case study-pilots can be a useful operational model; (v) resourcing collaborations sustainably is a challenge-the time, people, and money required are often under-estimated; (vi) undertaking continual, iterative learning reviews ensures ongoing value and impact of collaborations. Recommendations for future work include the development of a "go/no-go" checklist to determine when collaboration is needed, supplemented with a set of "best practice" principles for establishing and working in collaborations involving HTA bodies.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based health technologies (AIHTs) have already been applied in clinical practice. However, there is currently no standardized framework for evaluating them based on the principles of health technology assessment (HTA).