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Healthcare Technology Assessment

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Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics

Abstract

Although the importance of exploring ethical issues in the context of Healthcare Technology Assessment (HTA) has been widely recognized, ethical analysis has played only a marginal role in HTA so far. To a large extent, this is due to a misconception about the relation between facts and values. The results of any HTA should be considered as a specific collocation of facts, guided by a set of moral and nonmoral notions. It is by virtue of these notions that the collected facts are considered relevant to the evaluation task at hand. Recognizing this fact has important implications for the practice of HTA, opening up opportunities for better integrating normative and empirical analysis. The paper starts with a brief overview of HTA, its rationale and its challenges, and the current practice of addressing ethical issues in the context of HTA. This is followed by the presentation of a model of evaluation, which will be applied to the controversy on cochlear implants for deaf children.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Gert Jan van der Wilt

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  1. Gert Jan van der Wilt
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Correspondence to Gert Jan van der Wilt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Duquesne University Center for Healthcare Ethics, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Henk ten Have

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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van der Wilt, G.J. (2015). Healthcare Technology Assessment. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_416-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_416-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05544-2

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