Hospital-based health technology assessment (HB-HTA) refers to the practice of health technology assessment for hospital management decision-making based on the actual situations in hospitals. It includes processes and methods of health technology assessment carried out in and for hospitals. Under the background of comprehensively promoting the reform of public hospitals in China, HB-HTA is undoubtedly an important scientific method to enhance the fine management of public hospitals and implement the policy of medical reform. This paper introduced the concept, the international and domestic development status, the characteristics of HB-HTA, and put forward the scheme of development of HB-HTA macroscopically, so as to promote the popularization and applications of HB-HTA in China.
With the increasing demand for health technology decision making in hospitals, the activities of hospital-based health technology assessment are increasing globally. Several developed countries, such as France, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Canada, The United State and Australia have carried out hospital-based health technology assessment activities. In order to further promote the development of health technology assessment in China and establish evidence-based management and decision-making concept of hospitals, the National Center for Medical Service Administration has carried out theoretical and practical research on hospital technology assessment by fully drawing on foreign advanced experience. This paper introduces the background, object, method and content of the research, the achievements of the pilot project and the prospect of the future, so as to provide a reference for readers to understand the overall situation of the project and related work.
ObjectiveTo rapidly review the effectiveness, safety, costs and applicability of helical tomotherapy (HT), so as to provide currently-available best evidence for decision makers of government health policies. MethodsWe electronically searched databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, CBM and other relevant professional websites. Two reviewers independently screened literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted data, assessed quality, and then performed descriptive analysis. Resultsa) We finally included 150 studies, encompassing 5 health technology assessments (HTAs), 18 clinical controlled trials (CCTs), and 127 observational studies. b) Four included HTAs were published during 2006-2009, providing fairly less evidence of low quality and the results of 145 primary studies showed that:HT was mainly used in the treatments of 14 types of cancer, with relatively low total toxicity and high survival rates. Although the quality of the included studies was poor, there was much evidence about prostate cancer, head and neck cancer, nasopharynx cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer and liver cancer, with accumulatively enough sample size and fairly reliable results in HT's efficacy and safety. And c) a total of 56 clinical trials had bee registered in Clinicaltrials.gov, most of which were registered by the occident; among them, 9 had been come to the end, yet without results published. ConclusionCurrent evidence of this study showed that, HT is safe and effective in clinic. But the abovementioned conclusion needs to be verified by conducting more high quality studies with long-term follow-up. The costs of HT in procurement, maintenance and application are high; and the skills, training and qualification of operators are required. We suggest that the procurement of HT should be reduced; it should be allocated rationally and effectively used after comprehensive assessment in China's cancer epidemiology characteristics, health resource allocation, disease burden, medical service level, etc.; and also high quality studies with long-term follow-up should be financially supported on the basis of establishing projects, so as to provide local evidence and consistently guide and improve scientific decision making.
Background In the latter of 20th century, a global growth in allergic diseases has been witnessed, accompanying with spring-out of therapeutic drugs. However, trials did not clarify the comparative effectiveness and pharmaceutical economics of these agents. Severe adverse drug effects have been reported increasingly in the last few years. These made it difficult for clinical practice and selection of national essential drugs. Objective To assess astemizole, loratadine, cetirizine and tefenadine for allergic rhinitis (AR) and urticaria in terms of effectiveness, heart-related drug adverse effects and pharmaceutical economics. Search strategy Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase and Chinese Biomedical Database will be searched. Additional database should be searched for safety and economic studies. Selection Criteria The publication languages are restrained to English and Chinese. 1) Effectiveness: high-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic Reviews (SRs)/ meta-analysis for AR and uritcaria are included, with comparisons restrained to among these four drugs; 2) Safety: a hierarchy of evidences of these four drugs for allergic diseases are included. 3) Economical evaluation: cost-effectiveness and cost-utility assessment of these four drugs for AR and urticaria should be included. Methods of review data extraction sheet and quality appraisal table are separately designed. QUOROM STATEMENT and Jadad Scale are applied, respectively, to SRs and RCTs. Two reviewers independently select the studies, appraise the quality and extract the data. Any disagreement is solved by discussion. Data analysis Fixed effect model is first applied. Sensitivity analysis is employed to study the heterogeneity between trials. Randomized effect model is alternatively used when compromised.
Objective To evaluate the efficacy, safety and economical values of nucleic acid/nueleotides for clinical nutritional support and immune treatment. Methods The following electronic databases were searched: Chinese Biomedicine database (CBM), MEDLINE, EMBASE and SCI. Data were extracted by two reviewers. Applied RevMan 4.1 for statistical analyse. Results Forty-six randomized controlled trials were identified, involving nucleic acids/nucleotides for clinical nutritional support, infant feed, immune treatment. Eighteen randomized trials comparing the use of immunonutrition which comprises nucleotides with standard enteral nutrition in surgical and critical ill patients. Combined analysis directed that immunonutrition therapy decrease infection events, length of hospitalization and the cost. Only one trial reported the effects of adding nucleotides to breast milk substitute, but there is no valuable results for clinical practice. Twenty-seven low quality trials compared the use of "immune RNA (iRNA)" with standard methods in hepatitis, carcinoma and burn patients, combined analysis directed that there are not valid evidences to confirm the value of iRNA. Conclusions Immunonutrition may decrease infection rates, length of hospitalisation and cost in surgery and critical ill patients, but we can not affirm the role of the nucleotides in irmnunonutrition. No evidences support the point of adding nucteotides in breast milk substitute. Also, we can not affirm the role of iRNA in clinical immune regulation treatment. There are no available evidences in nucleic acids for caducity prevention and improvement of aging people’s health. Consequently, we advice Chinese health officials to enhance the management for applying "nucleic acids nutrients".
Objective To systematically review the efficacy, safety, cost-effectiveness, indications, contraindications, and ethical issues for surgical treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods The CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Cochrane Library databases were electronically searched to collect for relevant studies on surgical treatment of AD from inception to November 26, 2024. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. Meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 17 software. Results A total of 59 studies were included. The results revealed that surgical treatment for AD had higher safety (OR=0.44, 95%CI 0.17 to 0.72, P<0.05), and patients had better ADAS-cog scores (SMD=0.54, 95%CI 0.18 to 0.90, P<0.05), with statistically significant differences. The economic burden of surgical treatment for AD increased with the severity of the disease. Deep brain stimulation may offer high economic benefits in the treatment of mild AD. The surgical indications can be summarized as: short disease duration, mild to moderate severity, and insufficient response to pharmacological interventions. Regarding contraindications, analysis of the included literature identified four core aspects: physiological and pathological contraindications, medical comorbidities and surgical risk contraindications, cognitive and psychological factor contraindications, and other contraindications. Ethical issues can be categorized into: informed consent and autonomy, ethical review and approval of research, and assessment of risks and benefits. Conclusion Current evidence suggests that surgical treatment for AD has certain benefits, but the surgical approaches for treating AD are still in the exploratory stage. Limited by the number and quality of the included studies, the above conclusion still requires more high-quality research to be verified.
Compared with traditional HTA, the most fundamental feature of HB-HTA is “organizational perspective”, which is based on the actual situation of the hospital and supports hospital management decision-making. The new health care reform has set higher goals and requirements for hospitals. HB-HTA has management, economic and technical functions, and it can provide methodological support for health care policy management and decision-making based on the current optimal evidence, and promote the transformation of hospital from administrative decision-making to evidence informed decision-making. As an integral part of HTA network, HB-HTA plays a role in health technology networks through vertical cooperation mechanism and horizontal diffusion mechanism. It can interact and cooperate with national and regional HTA, as well as spread based on a specific medical field.
ObjectiveTo construct rapid health technology assessment (RHTA) reporting norms, with a view to providing methodological references for RHTA research and reporting. MethodsBased on the preliminary pool of entries constructed by the literature research results, and taking into account the characteristics of RHTA, a Delphi expert correspondence questionnaire was designed, and 25 experts in the field of HTA were selected to conduct multiple rounds of expert correspondence. By calculating the expert authority coefficient and opinion coordination coefficient, combined with the average value of the entry score, coefficient of variation and full score ratio, the entries were selected to form the list of RHTA report specifications. ResultsThe positive coefficient of experts in both rounds of investigation was 100%, the expert authority coefficient in the first round was 0.858, and the expert authority coefficient in the second round was 0.838. The Kendall coordination coefficient in the first round was 0.169, and in the second round it was 0.081. According to the correspondence of 2 rounds of investigation, the final formation included 8 aspects, 26 first-level entries and 18 second-level entries in the list of RHTA report specifications. ConclusionThis study constructed the RHTA report specification, which is both scientific and operable, providing a reference for RHTA report writing.
With the development of health technology assessments, the public are increasingly aware of the importance of assessing timeliness for health decision-making, which emerges the requirement for early and timely assessment for emerging health technologies. Providing early and timely assessments prior to a technology accesses the market or prior to implementation can provide decision-makers with sufficient time to develop an application program for a new technology. This paper mainly summarizes the profiles of three emerging health technology horizon scanning systems in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, and compares and analyzes their related contents, thus providing reference experience for the construction of emerging health technology horizon scanning system in China.