
2nd Summer School on Health Technology Assessment & Medical Devices
28th – 30th September 2017
University of Patras, Greece

Attendants will learn principles, methods and how to use tools to perform their activities, maximising the uptake and impact of their research outcomes. In fact, informing the research and the design of new healthcare technologies with scientific methods for early stage HTA will have a considerable impact on a number of important elements (i.e. cost-effectiveness, ethical issues) during the research process, when with small changes it is possible to achieve big results!
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial structured process aiming to inform decisions regarding healthcare technologies at different levels: from hospital level (i.e. inform the acquisition of costly medical devices), to Regional/National level (i.e. recommend the adoption of a new healthcare technology to the NHS), or international levels (i.e. inform large-scale prevention/intervention campaigns).
The definition of health technology is very broad and refers to any application of organised knowledge and skills in the form of medicines, medical devices, vaccines, procedures and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of life. Nevertheless, to date the majority of HTA training activities and materials are more focused on drugs (i.e. less on medical devices or ICT applications for healthcare) and oriented to medical doctors, health economists and pharmacologists.
Although several training activities have been developed for the above mentioned professionals, there is a lack of training opportunities specifically oriented to biomedical engineers (BME), clinical engineers and medical physicists, who are daily involved in the design, validation, selection, maintenance and use of healthcare technologies, and particularly medical devices and eHealth. This lack of training has recently been raised by international organisations including the WHO, IUPESM, IFMBE and EAMBES.
Program Committee
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The school is endorsed by:the European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering and Science the Institute of Biomedical Technology the University of Patras, Greece |
Venue: Biomedical Technology Unit, University of Patras (next to the Laboratory of Seismology).
