HTA process steps | Value Judgments Made Explicit (Evaluations) | Criteria | References |
1. Agency’s Official Mandate (scientific expectations, ethical analysis, assessment & appraisal) | Relevance of deliverables for decision-making. | Health care. Health expenditures. | |
2. Analysis of HTA request | Possible conflict of interest. | Interest from initiator of the report. | |
3. Evaluation of HTA Request | Relevance of the request. | Relevance of research questions addressing the impacts of the technology. Overall costs of HTA. | |
4. Priority Setting for requests | Importance of the request. | Urgency. | |
5. Scoping a) Strategic Analysis (Choice of parties involved in the scoping process) b) Preliminary Analysis | Relevance of selected parties. Relevance of selected issues. Quality of information gathered for the scoping. Relevance of the choice of comparator (Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome, Setting) Weight of the information/results to frame the research questions. | Contribution to the process. Relevance addressing the impacts of the technology. Idem. Idem. Idem. | |
6. Framing the Policy Question | Importance of the action to be considered by the decision makers. | Impact of such action. | |
7. Framing the Research Questions | Importance of outcomes to be/not to be considered. | Relevance to agency’s mandate (1.). Relevance to policy question (6.). Relevance of technology’s impact analysis. | |
8. Data Collection Strategy | Importance of criteria and measure procedures for each of the research question’s outcome. Relevance of selected data bank. | Relevant information. Idem. | |
9. Data Gathering | Relevance of inclusion/exclusion criteria. | Relevant information. | |
10. Results and Evaluation of Evidence | Quality of the evidence. | Validity of the information. | |
11. Evidence Synthesis and Results Presentation | Importance of some data/non-importance of other. | Relevance to agency’s mandate (1.). Relevance to policy question (6.). Relevance to research question (7.). | |
12. Discussion of Results | Relevance of the results discussed. | Relevance to agency’s mandate (1.). Relevance to policy question (6.). Relevance to research question (7.). | |