Health technology assessment (HTA) is a multidisciplinary process to determine the value of a health technology to inform decision-making. A HTA comprises several domains, including clinical effectiveness, epidemiology and economic evaluation, each of which relies on evidence synthesis. When we think of evidence synthesis, we often picture systematic reviews and a formal, well-structured process for gathering and evaluating information. The need to provide a range of timely evidence syntheses on a single topic often requires reliance on data across the spectrum in terms of quality, quantity, and applicability. In this webinar we will discuss some of the challenges in evidence synthesis when the best available evidence may not answer all the questions. Given that a decision maker cannot usually wait for further high quality studies, we will highlight some of the approaches to ensuring that the evidence is presented to address decision uncertainty.
Speakers:
Susan Spillane is one of the Deputy Directors in HIQA’s HTA Directorate, and oversees the function within the Directorate which provides HTA support to the National Screening Advisory Committee. Susan has a background in pharmacy, and postgraduate training in pharmacoepidemiology, statistics, public health, and cancer research, and previously held roles at the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, and the National Cancer Institute, USA.
Conor Teljeur is Chief Scientist in HIQA’s Health Technology Assessment Directorate. He has worked in HTA since 2010, working across all domains including developing numerous economic models. He also contributed to several European methodological guidelines. Before HIQA, he worked for 12 years as a health services researcher in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care in Trinity College Dublin, with a particular interest in deprivation and spatial analysis.
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