IFMBE Division
for
Healthcare Technology Assessment (DHCTA)

Report 1997-2000

Board members

Co-opted by the IFMBE/AC

Board meetings during the period

Nice 1997, Ottawa 1998, Edinburgh 1999, Chicago 2000

Webpage

http://www.imt.liu.se/cmt/ifmbe/index.html

Strategic issues, goals, plans, activities

We have reached a situation in healthcare where the gap between the achievable and the affordable has become quite evident and demanding for everyone. Governmental actions have been taken in several countries and agencies for HCTA established (the network of agencies INAHTA presently includes 23 members). Needs assessment, medical technology assessment and evidence-based healthcare, early warning systems, priority setting models, leadership and implementation in healthcare, including new collaborative models between actors, and quality assessment are increasingly used systematically. Actors in this are policy makers, healthcare providers, payers, societal predecessors concerning legal issues and regulations, as well as drug and device industry, and patient organisations.

It is a challenge for the biomedical engineering community to increase the participation in these activities and contribute to efficient policy making.

The Division's role is to stimulate to and arrange activities in order to

• increase the involvement of biomedical engineers in policy making with information on costs, effectiveness and ethical issues regarding medical devices;
• encourage biomedical engineers to make use of assessments results, which are available through various databases;
• increase the engineers' knowledge of health economics and the ability to critically read assessment reports;
• stimulate collaboration across borders to healthcare professionals and other groups in collecting data for effective and cost-effective use of medical technology;
• strengthen involvement of industry;
• develop training activities.

Membership

The area of HCTA is extremely important for the IFMBE. The Division should struggle for more effective dissemination of principles of HTA as well as for providing demonstrators from the fields of medical devices and IT. Although the Board feels that the present situation is not adequate for inviting a large individual membership, a start would be to link interested persons to the Division through engagements in demanding tasks.

Activities

Collaboration
Co-operation with WHO, ISTAHC (International Society of Technology Assessment in Healthcare), IMIA, IEEE, AAATE (Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe) and other bodies is currently accomplished through joint activities.

Conferences, meetings, courses
Due to the multi-disciplinarity of the HCTA field, we find it highly valuable and appropriate to arrange meeting points between professionals from various areas of concern. Such meetings are continuously being arranged in collaboration with ISTAHC, IEEE, and others. The IFMBE World conferences and regional meetings are excellent opportunities for such meetings.

The Division decided to pay certain attention to the field of rehabilitation engineering and the IFMBE participated in the IFMBE/UN-ECE study 1989-1992. This study was followed by involvement in the arrangement of a workshop on technology assessment in rehabilitation engineering for the European countries with economies in transition in the Czech Republic in 1995. Continued involvement in this field has been achieved through sessions at AAATE (Thessaloniki 1997, Düsseldorf 1999) and International Conference on Outcome Assessment in Assistive Technology, Oslo 1999).

Workshops and conference sessions in the field of HCTA over the years have demonstrated increasing awareness and activities by the Federation members in the field, exemplified by the IFMBE World Congresses in Kyoto 1991, Rio 1994, Nice 1997, Chicago 2000-06-26, and by regional conferences as EMBEC'99 in Vienna.

Publications
The above activities are reported in Conference Proceedings, Reports, Monographs and Journal articles.

An agreement has been made with the ISTAHC (International Society of Technology Assessment in Healthcare) to make their Newsletter available to the Federation Societies' members.

Strategy

The issue of HCTA is widely getting increased importance in healthcare policy and practices. Healthcare is provided through technology, which often is effective, but resources are scarce. Activities as those described above should continue. The involvement in policy making by engineers should be further encouraged.

The IFMBE should strengthen its efforts to

• increase the involvement of biomedical engineers in policy making with information on costs, effectiveness and ethical issues regarding medical devices;
• encourage biomedical engineers to make use of assessment results which are available through various databases (e.g. Internet);
• increase the engineers knowledge of health economics and the ability to critically read assessment reports;
• continue to stimulate collaboration across borders to healthcare professionals and other groups in collecting data for effective and cost-effective use of medical technology.

Special issues are

• attracting members to the Division and finding means to meet their needs and expectations;
• strengthened involvement of industry;
• developing training activities.

The Federation should continue building bridges between the biomedical and clinical engineers and healthcare professionals in order to achieve the most proper use of medical technology with regard to the resources available, the state of health of the population and the quality of life of the patient.