Is Health Technology Assessment a part of the purchasing process for inpatient care?

Abstract: The purpose of this report is to map how HTA, Health Technology Assessment, is being used for MDD products for inpatient care in Sweden. Swedish Medtech, a professional association for medical technology companies, has a need to carry out a survey about the use of HTA in Sweden for their future work. They have a project which goal is to inform policy makers about the value of innovative medical products and treatment, where HTA can be one way of informing about the value. As a starting point in Swedish Medtech’s project, this mapping shows todays situation. For Sweden to have an evidence based care, there are numerus health economic evaluation approaches. HTA goes deeper by using academic literature, ethical and social aspects together with health economics to analyse methods for health care. HTA analysis aims to answer the question: is the benefit of the method worth the cost? The conclusion from this report is that HTA is used today, but only in limited extent in the three biggest healthcare providers. This report has not found any specific pattern on the use of HTA with the restrictions in this paper.