Health promotion and disease prevention as a complement to community health indicators: Working group 1

The aim of Working Group 1 has been to assess health promotion and disease prevention activities in terms of benefits, risks, and economic, social, and ethical implications as a complement to community health indicators. Objectives: The objectives delineated for Working Group 1 were: 1) to analyze current initiatives to assess health promotion...

Health technology assessment and screening in Sweden

Objectives: To describe health technology assessment (HTA) and policies concerning three screening procedures in Sweden. Methods: The main source of information was reports from the Swedish Council for Technology Assessment in Health Care (SBU) and other governmental reports, supplemented by the professional literature. Results: Prevention is...

Health policy, health technology assessment, and screening in Europe

Objective: To present a summary of the papers in this volume, illustrating the links between health technology assessment (HTA), health policies and specifically policies toward prevention and screening, and implementation of screening tests in the case of three screening methods: mammography screening for breast cancer, screening for prostate...

Introduction: Mass screening, health technology assessment, and health policy in some European countries

Objective: The series of papers in this issue was developed to examine the use of health technology assessment in policies toward prevention - specifically toward mass screening - in European countries. The papers actually examined three screening strategies: mammography screening for breast cancer, prostate-specific antigen screening for...

The ethics of assessing health technologies

Health technology assessment (HTA) consists of the systematic study of the consequences of the introduction or continued use of the technology in a particular context, with the explicit objective to arrive at a judgment of the value or merit of the technology. Ideally, it is aimed at assessing all aspects of a given technology or group of...

Introduction Health technology assessment and the European Union

Health technology assessment (HTA) has become increasingly important in the European Union as an aid to decision making. As agencies and programs have been established, there is increasing attention to coordination of HTA at the European level, especially considering the growing role of the European Union in public health in Europe. This series...

The use of societal criteria in priority setting for health technology assessment in the Netherlands: Initial experiences and future challenges

Priority setting for the evaluation of health technologies in the Netherlands is exclusively based on the scientific merits of individual research proposals. This process has not resulted in satisfactory allocation of resources. Therefore, societal criteria for setting priorities for health technology assessment have been proposed as an adjunct...

Fifteen years experience with finger arterial pressure monitoring: Assessment of the technology

We review the Finapres technology, embodied in several TNO-prototypes and in the Ohmeda 2300 and 2300e Finapres NIBP. Finapres is an acronym for FINger Arterial PRESsure, the device delivers a continuous finger arterial pressure waveform. Many papers report on the accuracy of the device in comparison with intra-arterial or with noninvasive but...

Introduction. Minimally invasive therapy in five European countries: Diffusion, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Minimally invasive therapy (MIT) is a field that has gained a great deal of attention since the mid-1980s. MIT is a new and rapidly growing area of medical treatment based on developments in endoscopy, vascular catheters, imaging devices, and related technologies. Although endoscopes have been in use for more than 100 years, it is relatively new...

Implications for hospitals, health workers, and patients

Minimally invasive surgery is one of the great innovations of health care in the 20th century. It promises to revolutionise surgery by allowing many more operations to be performed with minimal hospitalisation. Pressure from patients has caused many techniques to spread rapidly before they have been adequately assessed. This must be resisted,...

Implications of minimally invasive therapy

The field of minimally invasive therapy (MIT) raises many important issues for the future of health care. It seems inevitable that MIT will replace much conventional surgery. This trend is good for society and good for patients. The health care system, however, may find the change disruptive. The need for hospital beds will shrink. Day surgery...