A Review on Existing Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Methodologies

Health technology assessment (HTA) generally means the step by step procedure to analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of a health technology. The COVID-19 pandemic situation has been made us realized about the important of HTA. For instance, before providing the vaccine for coronavirus, the vaccines need to be trialed for proofing its efficiency and effectiveness and this whole procedure of clinical trial is known as health technology assessment. This review has studied the definitions of HTA provided by international HTA agencies and researchers, and proposes a working definition of HTA. Moreover, this study broadly describes the framework and methodologies of conducting HTA for a health technology. In COVID-19 situation, it is necessary to find a suitable method to assess coronavirus vaccines to identify its efficiency and effectiveness. This study will be helpful for the HTA conducting authorities to find a suitable way to assess vaccines. In addition, this study has pinpointed the current study gaps in HTA and suggested few recommendations to address HTA at present.