The NIH Consensus-Development Program and the Assessment of Health-Care Technologies

Abstract

The need and the demand for assessment of health-care technologies are growing rapidly. Biomedical research and development, especially since World War II, have dramatically increased the ability to prevent, diagnose, and manage a wide variety of diseases. These same advances have brought with them serious scientific, medical, economic, social, legal, and ethical questions. The public and its representatives, as well as the biomedical community, have thus called increasingly for comprehensive, balanced evaluations of recommendations regarding the use of health-care technologies.The 1970's witnessed a greater emphasis on extension and formalization of the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), . . .