Towards Health Technology Assessment in the Czech Republic

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is considered to be one of the tools how to improve health systems imbalances and problems through systematic evaluation of properties, effects, and impacts of health technology. The role of HTA is discussed in the context of increasing expenditures on health care caused especially by improving and using new technologies in the health care sector. The paper analyzes reasons for the growth of costs of health care and describes one of the methods for regulation of this growth - use of HTA. The Analysis deals with the development and use of HTA in the Czech Republic. The conflict of available resources and innovative technologies in healthcare is performed and methods of HTA are discussed in general introduction. The goal of this article is to reflect the Czech situation in HTA. The main issues of HTA assessment in relation to health policy are introduced. The progress of HTA in the Czech Republic is evaluated separately as a process towards to applied pharmacoeconomics and as a process towards HTA. Both the comparative analyses are performed to show the gap in implementing HTA in the Czech Republic. It was found that HTA in the sense of pharmacoeconomics was implemented (even if Czech Republic does not have a formal HTA body in the sense of an independent agency), however, such a selective use of HTA principles so far has not resulted in the implementation of HTA.