Workshop organized by HTA.de underlines need for discussion about the environmental impact of medical devices

During the 24th Annual Meeting of the Network for Evidence-Based Medicine (March 22-24, 2023 in Potsdam, Germany), HTA.de organized a workshop on the topic “Environmental Impact: a new dimension in the assessment of medical devices?“, in collaboration with the Network’s HTA Department. Read more here.

Registration of clinical trials

HTA.de is participating in an initiative to improve transparency in the registration of clinical trials and the timely publication of their results in Germany. More information can be found here.

HTAi 2022 Annual Meeting

25 March 2022

The 2022 annual meeting of Health Technology Assessment international will take place from 25 to 29 June in Utrecht (NL). This year’s topic is “Lifecycle Approach – Coming Together to Make it Happen” – registration is now open!

HTA.de mourns the passing of David Banta

22 March 2022

David Banta, one of the pioneers of HTA, died on 10 March, a few days after his 84th birthday.

He was born in Texas and studied medicine at Duke University from 1959 to 1963, followed in 1969 by an MSc in Public Health at Harvard University. After several clinical positions, he worked at the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) from 1975 onwards. During this time, he produced reports that became groundbreaking for the further development of technology assessment. The archive of the OTA, which was dismantled in 1995, can be found here. Among others, the report “Development of Medical Technology” (1976), which was written under his leadership, is worth mentioning.

After some time at the Pan American Health Organisation, he moved to Europe, where he worked in the Netherlands, including as a professor of HTA in Maastricht (1987-1991) and at TNO in Leiden. There he organised projects in the 1990s that in turn became seminal for today’s EUnetHTA projects, namely EUR-ASSESS and HTA-Europe, and ultimately represent an important influence on current EU legislation. HTA-Europe was also the first international project in which the German HTA working group at the time was involved.

Until a few years ago, he was still working as a consultant for international organisations, first and foremost the WHO. He was also president of ISTAHC, the predecessor society of HTAi. Today, the highest award HTAi has to give bears his name. He also served for many years on the editorial board of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. He spent his retirement mainly in France.