Director

Prof.  Joshua Shemer

The Israeli Center for Technology Assessment in Health Care (ICTAHC) is an applied research unit in the field of health technology assessment for health services.  ICTAHC was founded in 1992 and serves as a supportive research center to the Israeli Ministry of Health in general and to the Director of Technology and Infrastructure in particular, regarding health policy and decision-making processes of health technologies. 

In addition, the center identifies, examines and evaluates new health technology assessment tools for prioritization in health care taking into consideration clinical, organizational, ethical, legal, social and economic deliberations.

Major research areas include establishing a comprehensive infrastructure for medical and economic evaluation of health technologies, assessing patterns of diffusion of health technologies, and establishing a strategy for an early alert system for emerging health technologies. 

The guiding principle of ICTAHC is: "Medical technology must be managed logically. It should be based on a systematic and scientific process that must be combined with skilful judgment."

Activities

The center's activities include: 

• advice to public organizations on medical technology management procedures;
• promotion of research, teaching and education in the field of health care service technologies;
• development of research models incorporating needs assessment, economic evaluation etc.,
• establishment of reciprocal relationships and cooperation with centers engaged in the field of medical technologies throughout the world.

Staff

The multi-disciplinary research team includes researchers in the fields of medicine, epidemiology, pharmacology, economics, informatics and nursing.

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