Integrating Ethics in HTA – Methods and Merits

Background: Ethics has been identified as a key element in health technology assessment (HTA) since its conception in the 1970s . A wide variety of methods for addressing ethical issues in HTA are available . Some of these are specially developed for use in HTA . Despite the constitutive role of ethics in HTA and the fact that many methods are available, ethics is still rarely addressed explicitly in HTA reports . This has prompted attention to why ethics should be integrated in HTA and less to how ethics can be integrated in HTA in a fruitful manner . Description/Objectives: The panel will demonstrate various ways that ethics can be integrated in HTA and to discuss their merits . The objective is to facilitate HTA agencies’ assessment of how to integrate ethics in their HTA work . An outline of various ways of integrating ethics in HTA will be illustrated by examples from HTA reports and publications . Various kinds of result based and process based integration will be presented and discussed . Checklist approaches will be compared to focus group approaches . Ethics