Introduction to Health Technology Assessment

Abstract

Abstract The objective of this review is to introduce the readers of this journal to the knowledge of some basic aspects of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). HTA starts from the need of the “political governance” to provide adequate health services to the citizens’ demand without overloading the budgets and with a correct resource management. HTA has become a determinant exigency for health care management which has acquired new economic and financial competence to respect the limited budgets. In the following paragraphs we introduce the general definition of HTA and then its further elaboration for each field application.