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Health care policy-makers throughout Europe seek to improve the health status of their citizens through the delivery of health services. Health policy thus aims at improving the performance and health outcomes within sustainable health systems.

Health technology assessment (HTA) contributes to the formulation of such health policy by providing evidence-based information to those who make policies and decide on the coverage and usage of health technologies. However, establishing links between HTA and policy-making poses challenges to both producers and users of HTA – and there is a potential to improve the responsiveness of HTA to the needs of policy-makers to achieve the desired goal for HTA of a larger policy input role. 

This book gives an overview of the relationship between HTA and health policy in Europe by:

• examining how HTA contributes to policy processes;
• summarizing the crucial components of good HTA;
• analysing HTA-policy links and processes in different health systems, and classifying common characteristics of the relations;
• exploring the impact of HTA on health care and health policy; and
• focusing on needs and demands for HTA as well as challenges and potential for improving the role of HTA at different policy levels.

This book seeks to transmit the value and potential of HTA to a wider audience beyond the decision-making and health care management arena and, by so doing, aims to increase the awareness and the application of HTA activities and evidencebased decision-making.