Before new drugs or treatments are adopted, their effectiveness and cost must be assessed. Find out how in this online course. Why are some treatments made available to patients while others are not?
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Explore how Health Technology Assessment (HTA) informs decisions about whether we should have access to certain treatments. This course is based on the University of Sheffield’s online distance-learning programme, the MSc International Health Technology Assessment.
You can continue to learn about healthcare decision-making in our other online course Measuring and Valuing Health.
What topics will you cover?
We’ll look at some of the key processes of HTA in order to answer some key questions about a new treatment, such as:
- How do we know if the treatment is of benefit?
- How can we make sense of all the evidence?
- How is evidence of the cost of drugs used in HTA?
We’ll also explore how the final HTA report fits within the wider range of information used to make decisions about which treatments to fund.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...
- Explore the assessment process for a new health technology and how this applies to a potential decision outcome.
- Explain the process behind decisions about which healthcare treatments are funded to a patient or member of the public.
- Investigate a health technology assessment (HTA) and understand the evidence presented.
- Contribute to an informed discussion about whether or not a new health technology is adopted and funded by the NHS, or other national healthcare system.
