The 2nd Summer School addresses early career researchers including PhD students as well as academics with a technical background, who are working on healthcare technologies, and moreover it is open also to the manufacturing sector. The aim is to provide theoretical and practical multidisciplinary training on HTA, focusing on Medical Devices. This will include methodology, modelling, mathematics, practical training and relevant case studies.

---

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 Leandro Pecchia (Chair), Chairman of the HTA Division of IFMBE, School of Engineering, University of Warwick. Nicolas Pallikarakis (Co-Chair), President of the Institute of Biomedical Technology (INBIT), Patras. Christopher James, Editor-in-Chief of the IET Healthcare Technology Letters, School of Engineering, University of Warwick. Marjan Hummel, Secretary of the HTA Division of IFMBE, Philips Healthcare. Rosanna Tarricone, Director of Centre for Health and Social Care Management (CERGAS) at Bocconi University. Ernesto Iadanza, Chairman of the IFMBE Clinical Engineering Division, Chairman of the Education and Training IUPESM Committee.

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 the University of Warwick, UK