A STUDY ON EARLY STAGE HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT (HTA) OF MODERN BIOMEDICAL DEVICES

Early stage Health Technology Assessment (HTA) of biomedical devices necessitates approaches separate from those used by pharmaceuticals. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evoke consumer requirements, and early stage economic analyses utilising Markov Models, are two approaches for early stage HTA being built in the Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Healthcare (MATCH) project. The spread of medical devices is accelerating at an incredible pace. The rising number of new patents issued per year shows that this trend will continue. Medical instruments, unlike medications, are inextricably linked to the context in which they are utilised and how they are managed. This provided a previously unseen global need for well-trained biomedical engineers who can assist healthcare facilities in evaluating them. The International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) is a multinational scientific society of biomedical engineers that has worked closely with the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) to promote the involvement of biomedical engineers in health technology assessment (HTA). Summer schools, training material, an HTA eLearning platform, HTA guidelines, awards, and more are all promoted by the IFMBE Health Technology Assessment Division (HTAD), which is the IFMBE operative branch in this field, promoting studies, projects, and activities to foster the growth of this specific and very important science sector. The vision, goal, and plan of the HTAD are described in this report, with an emphasis on the outcomes and their effect on global policymaking