Health Technology Assessment: Choosing Which Treatments Get Funded
Explore how Health Technology Assessment (HTA) informs decisions about whether we should have access to certain treatments. This course is based on the University of Sheffield’s online distance-learning programme, the MSc International Health Technology Assessment.
You can continue to learn about healthcare decision-making in our other online course Measuring and Valuing Health.
What topics will you cover?
We’ll look at some of the key processes of HTA in order to answer some key questions about a new treatment, such as:
We’ll also explore how the final HTA report fits within the wider range of information used to make decisions about which treatments to fund.
When would you like to start?
Most FutureLearn courses run multiple times. Every run of a course has a set start date but you can join it and work through it after it starts. Find out more
- How do we know if the treatment is of benefit?
- How can we make sense of all the evidence?
- How is evidence of the cost of drugs used in HTA?
We’ll also explore how the final HTA report fits within the wider range of information used to make decisions about which treatments to fund.
When would you like to start?
Most FutureLearn courses run multiple times. Every run of a course has a set start date but you can join it and work through it after it starts. Find out more
- Course starts on 29 July 2019
- What do people say about this course?
"This course was very helpful to me. It gave me an overview of the HTA process. I would definitely recommend this course to my peers."
Zizi Amgad
Who will you learn with?
What will you achieve?
Explore the assessment process for a new health technology and how this applies to a potential decision outcome.
Explain the process behind decisions about which healthcare treatments are funded to a patient or member of the public.
Investigate a health technology assessment (HTA) and understand the evidence presented.
Contribute to an informed discussion about whether or not a new health technology is adopted and funded by the NHS, or other national healthcare system.
Who is the course for?
You may work in the medical or pharmaceutical profession or study a subject such as medicine, nursing, healthcare or health economics.
Or perhaps you’re a patient or an interested member of the public who wants to know the story behind the headlines. This course will help you to make an informed contribution to discussions about NHS decisions.
You should have an interest in healthcare decision making and, in particular, the economic aspects that this involves. No particular mathematical skills or previous economics experience are required, though a basic familiarity with healthcare research could be helpful. The course is accessible to anyone with a secondary or high school-level education.
You can find out more about some of the themes covered in this course in Claire Beecroft’s post for the FutureLearn blog: “Penny pinchers or NICE people? Why someone’s got to choose which treatments get funded.”
