Priority setting for health technology assessment at CADTH

Area of Science:

• Health Technology Assessment (HTA)
• Decision Analysis
• Health Policy Research

Background:

• Effective prioritization of health technology assessment (HTA) research is crucial for efficient resource allocation.
• Existing methods may not fully capture the complexity of selecting policy-relevant research topics.
• A structured approach is needed to guide decision-making in HTA research funding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a practical, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach for setting priorities in health technology assessment (HTA) research.
• To integrate a deliberative process with MCDA for robust HTA research prioritization.
• To inform HTA agencies in selecting the most important and policy-relevant research topics.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review and expert consultation to identify and group HTA prioritization criteria.
• Pair-wise comparison and consensus-building to score and prune criteria.
• Ranking HTA proposals using weighted criteria scores and committee discussion for final priority setting.

Main Results:

• Six key criteria (disease burden, clinical impact, alternatives, budget impact, economic impact, available evidence) accounted for over 75% of decision-making weight.
• 102 proposals were considered, resulting in the selection of 29 research priorities since May 2006.
• The MCDA and deliberative approach demonstrated consistency and consensus among committee members.

Conclusions:

• The described approach for HTA research priority setting is practical, easy to implement, and well-received by committee members.
• This method can assist HTA and other research agencies in selecting high-impact, policy-relevant research topics.
• Efficient resource allocation for HTA research can be achieved by informing the selection of the most critical topics.