It was not long time ago, when (biomedical) engineers were very little involved in any HTA. Warwick Engineering has played a key role in supporting change in this area, achieving significant impact in relatively little time. Since 2015, when Dr Leandro Pecchia was elected as Chair of the IFMBE HTA Division, all the Biomedical Engineering Conferences have been giving growing space to HTA papers, round tables and keynotes. As result, the majority of BME degrees in Europe, USA and Asia are starting introducing HTA as core topic for BME. As result, only 4 years later, WHO is systematically considering BMEs among the international experts to support their action in different Countries, and often Warwick BMEs. Last weekend, Dr Pecchia has been in Greece, on WHO invitation, to deliver an intensive training on HTA and to review and provide feedback on recently proposed Greek regulation on HTA, before this will be enforced in the next few months. The training was addressed to 20 Officers from the Greek Ministry of Health, and was followed by a workshop aiming at discussing the draft regulation and prepare formal recommendation, basing also on the recent publication* leaded by Warwick on HTA of medical devices.

From left to right:

• Dr Oriana Ciani, Bocconi University
• Prof Nicolas Pallikarakis, INBIT (Greek National Institute for Biomedical Technologies)
• Dr Leandro Pecchia, University of Warwick

 

* Polisena, J., Castaldo, R., Ciani, O., Federici, C., Borsci, S., Ritrovato, M., ... & Pecchia, L. (2018). Health technology assessment methods guidelines for medical devices: how can we address the gaps? The International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering perspective. International journal of technology assessment in health care, 34(3), 276-289.