HTA for Medical Devices: Multiple-Criteria Decision Making as an Outcome Evaluation Tool

Health Technology Assessment (HTA), although having been routinely applied in drugs and surgery for a long time, is still quite challenging in medical devices. The reason is that the main objective of HTA studies for devices is not optimization of the cost-effectiveness ratio, but rather decisions about procurement and/or incorporation of the apparatus. The clinical benefit is not expressed in terms of quality of life, but in the rate of diagnostic yield, comfort of the clinician, or the extent to which the technology makes the therapy shorter and/or more patient-friendly. Utilization of multiple-criteria decision-making methods for evaluation of the aggregated clinical, technical and user's effect (outcome) is recommended as the input to cost-effectiveness analyses. Different methods are derived for strategic and/or operational assessment of new technology.