The field of health technology assessment (HTA) is still relatively new, but it has shown
remarkable growth over the last decade, having spread first from the United States to
Europe, and now to the entire world. HTA seeks to couple evidence with decision-making,
and thus has similarities to evidence-based health care and evidence-based policy-making.
The early history of HTA, beginning around 1975, reveals a first period of synthesising
available evidence—principally that dealing with efficacy and cost-effectiveness of health�…