New publication has assessed the most important barriers and facilitators of HTA usage in decision-making in Europe
A newly published article by Cheung et al. aimed to quantify and compare the relative importance of barriers and facilitators regarding the use of HTA in several European countries. A survey was conducted among 136 policy makers and HTA researchers from the Netherlands, Germany, France, and United Kingdom. The analysis generated an importance score for each factor (barriers and facilitators) assessed differences between the countries.
The results show that six barriers and five facilitators were deemed highly important. Eleven barriers and ten facilitators differed in their importance between countries. Particularly important factors were policy characteristics, research & researcher characteristics, and organisation & resources to facilitate uptake of HTA, such as an explicit framework for decision-making and quality research.
The authors conclude that for all countries it is crucial to create an explicit framework for the decision-making context to include HTA evidence and that country differences in the quality of research emphasize the need for international collaboration in HTA.
PMID: 29303374 DOI: 10.1080/14737167.2018.1421459