Summary
Contents
Subject index
The `effectiveness revolution' both in research and clinical practice, has tested available methods for health services research to the extreme. How far can observational methods, routine data and qualitative methods be used in health care evaluation? What cost and outcome measures are appropriate, and how should data be gathered? With the support of over two million pounds from the British Health Technology Assessment Research Programme, the research project for this Handbook has led to both a synthesis of all of the existing knowledge in these areas and an agenda for future debate and research. The chapters and their authors have been selected through a careful process of peer review and provide a coher
Identifying and Filling Gaps in the Evidence
Introduction
The number of health technologies, including drugs, devices, procedures and settings, is seemingly endless. There are some 10 000 distinguishable diseases in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) coding, each of which is accompanied by at least 10 significant interventions, implying there are some 100 000 existing interventions. To this an ever-expanding annual new intake needs to be added. However, the capacity to identify new technologies as they appear, still less to prioritise them for evaluation, and then evaluate them seems uncomfortably finite. Many healthcare systems now recognise that this gap needs careful managing if they are to avoid the distortion of priorities for healthcare spending. The risks are both distortion due ...
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