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Updated: March 2, 2001 |
Assessment of Information | |
The purpose of technology assessment in healthcare is to produce information on the impact of the introduction and use of a specific technology on citizens, patients and on the healthcare organisations including their funding. Usually the measurement of impact covers safety, cost, efficacy, effectiveness and efficiency (cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness or cost-utility) of a technology and the social, legal and ethical consequences of its introduction. This information provides a basis for rational decision-making whether or not to exploit a given technology.
The information technologies for healthcare are often complex, the impact following their introduction is not directly identifiable at the patient level, it often extends beyond the primary user organisation, and some of the benefits (or drawbacks) of the technologies are intangible or not quantifiable. In addition, the technology usually cannot be isolated from the organisational context in which it is implemented, resulting in impaired transferability or validity of assessment findings between organisations. Being diffuse they are considered to be difficult to assess using the standard methodologies of technology assessment. The proceedings of a IMIA Working Conference give a good overview of medical informatics assessment research.
In the health telematics project portfolio the purpose of the assessment projects is to develop proper methodologies, assess the impact of the individual sector projects and to contribute to the building up of a European healthcare telematics assessment know-how.
HEALTHWATCH identifies, describes and
evaluate significant health telematics applications and builds a database of
the information. It has collected data from 500 health telematics application
sites and analysed it. The evaluation of applications is based on the analysis
of generic statements which point to the critical success factors and the results
can be used to develop simple application profiles for benchmarking.
VATAM develops general guidelines for validation of health telematics applications,
in cooperation with eight health telematics projects.
TASTE aims to produce guidelines for setting priorities and for the assessment of the impact (cost, benefit,
effectiveness, etc.) of telemedicine systems, specifically in teleneuromedicine. The scopes of the VATAM and TASTE projects are complementary, covering the validation-assessment axis.
The concerted action TELEPLANS is a platform for information exchange on the results of assessment studies and experiences of the use of telemedicine.
National health technology assessment agencies have the task to promote the effectiveness of healthcare. For this purpose they employ different means:
These agencies also have an active role in developing the national healthcare policies, ranging from informing the citizens to regulating the introduction of new technologies.
IT for healthcare is one of the technologies assessed in national and international projects, and some organisations active in this field are listed below. Searchable databases of ongoing projects are available at the INAHTA website and at the NZHTA site.
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