Health Technology Assessment and Health Care Utilisation in the Management of Early Prostate Cancer

Abstract

Health technology assessment (HTA) is a key tool used to allocate health care funding. A critical aspect of HTA is the performance of economic evaluations that compare the costs and outcomes for competing therapies; these typically rely on data from clinical trials. For early prostate cancer, this represents a challenge, as long-term survival and quality-of-life effects—key outcomes in such evaluations—may require a decade or more of follow-up. Thus, identification of early or intermediate measures of benefit is critical. Systematic reviews of economic evaluations in prostate cancer show that understanding the links between intermediate and final outcomes is important for confidence in asses..