CHALLENGES IN CONTEMPORARY HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT: A VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE

The Special Interest Group on Ethics and HTA (health technology assessment) has invited two renowned philosophers, Norman Daniels from Harvard University and Henry Richardson from Georgetown University to reflect on the role of HTA in healthcare policy making. Both acknowledge its importance, but at the same time warn against a too mechanistic deployment of HTA. In their view, the relevance of HTA to healthcare policy making would considerably be enhanced if it were subsumed within a broader deliberative framework. Why should this be so? What is there to deliberate on, who should do the deliberating, where and when, and how does this relate to the more technical elements of HTA such as evidence synthesis and economic modeling?