The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has today published national guidelines on the retrieval and interpretation of economic evaluations of health technologies and updated national guidelines on the clinical effectiveness of health technologies.

The guidelines on the retrieval and interpretation of economic evaluationsoutline best practice in the interpretation of economic evaluations for the Irish healthcare system.Applying the guidelines can improve the efficiency of the technology assessment process by maximising the use of relevant published evidence and potentially avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.

The updated clinical effectiveness guidelines outline the appropriate methods for evaluating the clinical effectiveness of health technologies. The guidelines are aimed at improving the accuracy and relevance of health technology assessments (HTAs) which are undertaken for the Irish healthcare system.

Dr Máirín Ryan, Director of Health Technology Assessment at HIQA, said:“Theseguidelines are intended to ensure that best practice is used when producing HTAs and to present clear, accurate and robust advice to both the people who produce HTAs, and to those who have to make difficult decisions about funding technologies.

The guidelines on the retrieval and interpretation of economic evaluations will support the work of national clinical guideline developers, who must ensure that their recommendations are feasible and supported by relevant economic literature. The criteria against which clinical guidelines are appraised include the cost-effectiveness, resource implications and budget impact of the recommendations. Inclusion of consistent and accurate information in this regard will help ensure the continued efficiency and sustainability of healthcare in Ireland and will help to allow new and beneficial technologies to be resourced and introduced in a timely fashion.”

Dr Ryan continued: “The guidelines published today are part of a suite of guidelines for health technology assessment. The Authority believes that these guidelines contribute to better technology assessment and thereby play a role in delivering safer better healthcare to the public.”

The publication of these guidelines follows a period of consultation to facilitate input from the general public, and was supported by a scientific advisory group comprising a range of experts in health technology assessment. The guidelines can be found at this page.

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Further Information: 

For further information please contact:
Sinead Whooley, Communications Manager, Health Information and Quality Authority
Tel: 01 8147488/ 087 9221941 Email: swhooley@hiqa.ie

Notes to the Editor: 

• Health technology assessment (HTA) addresses a range of issues associated with the introduction of a health technology.
• These guidelines are part of a suite of guidelines for health technology assessment. The aim of the HTA guidelines is to produce HTAs that provide decision makers with information that is useful, relevant and timely and to ensure that healthcare interventions used in Ireland are clinically effective for patients, are affordable, and are good value for money.
• The guidelines apply to HTA being conducted by, or on behalf of the Health Information and Quality Authority, the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, the Department of Health, and the Health Service Executive (HSE). They should also prove valuable to clinical guideline developers preparing national guidelines for quality assurance by the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee and subsequent endorsement by the Minister for Health. They apply to all healthcare interventions, including medications, procedures, medical devices, broader public health initiatives, and service delivery models. They are relevant to the assessment of both new and existing healthcare technologies.
• The new guidelines have been developed to assist researchers with the retrieval, quality assessment and interpretation of existing economic evaluation literature. Directly applying results from international literature to Ireland may pose a challenge unless specific concerns for transferability of clinical and economic data are first addressed. These include the:
  • extent to which the clinical efficacy data are representative of the likely effectiveness that can be achieved in Ireland
  • extent to which economic data are representative of the likely costs and resource utilisationincurred in Ireland
  • generalisability of the clinical and economic data across different patient populations (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity) within Ireland
  • generalisability of the clinical and economic data due to local and regional differences in healthcare practice in Ireland.