Returns on research funded under the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme: Economic analysis and case studies

Abstract

The Department of Health (England) requested that RAND Europe conduct an economic analysis of the impact of the HTA Programme. This article describes the results of that work, which consisted of analysis of the potential economic benefits of a sample of HTA funded studies and comparison to programme costs, supplemented by a set of short case studies exploring the impacts of the HTA Programme on policy and practice. Based on our analysis, if 12 per cent of the potential net benefit of implementing the findings of this sample of 10 studies for one year was realised, it would cover the cost of the HTA Programme from 1993 to 2012. Drawing on the case studies and the economic analysis, we have also made a number of observations that could help ensure that the HTA Programme maximises the likelihood of findings being adopted.