Health Technology Assessment and medical devices

Health technology is everything that can be utilized in medical processes, i.e. drugs, biologics, devices, equipment and supplies, medical and surgical procedures, support systems, and organizational and managerial systems. Health Technology Assessment (HTA) comprises a number of various methods utilized to assess health technologies. Medical devices constitute a large area of interest for HTA. As an example of a comprehensive HTA methodology, clinical and economic effectiveness of targeted preventive of breast cancer (for women with the BRCA1/2 gene mutation) is studied on a sample of 105 women included in the program against a control group of 91 patients (with the same gene mutation). Generally, there is not much interest in HTA results in the Czech Republic. Basic reasons and prospects are discussed. At present, the question of assessing a particular medical device purchased or to be purchased is topical in the Czech Republic. The situation is quite cloudy, as each installation differs both in its technical specification, and in sale and guarantee terms and conditions. Moreover, there is an ambiguous role of consolidating dealers in a market, where no price list exist. As an example, MRI 1.5T purchases in the Czech Republic in 2008-9 are analyzed.