Health Care Evaluation

In a systematic manner AHTA identifies, collates, appraises, and synthesises evidence (research) on different health interventions, to allow policy makers or health professionals to decide if it is effective, safe, and cost-effective. The range of health interventions includes: 

• screening programs,
• surgical procedures,
• diagnostic tests,
• staging tests, or
• use of different medical devices.

AHTA has a contract with the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing to perform these systematic reviews on behalf of the Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC). This assists the MSAC to provide an evidence-based recommendation to the Australia Health Minister, on whether the medical technology should receive public funding or not (via listing on the Medicare Benefits Schedule).

AHTA also play a lead role in assisting the Australian Government and the MSAC to refine and develop evaluation methodologies and processes.

AHTA have also conducted systematic reviews on various aspects of healthcare for health insurance companies, practitioner bodies (in order to allow them to develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines) or State based healthcare providers.

AHTA's current systematic reviews include:

• Cryotherapy for recurrent prostate cancer and renal cancer,
• Molecular testing for the diagnosis of myeloproliferative disorders,
• Home based sleep studies.
  

Past projects can be accessed here.