A Supplier perspective on Health Technology Assessment. Simon Stone Clinical Architect Oracle Corporation June 2012

1. Simon Stone
Clinical Architect
Oracle Corporation
June 2012

2. Some (obvious) truths!
IT vendors and Systems Integrators want to make a profit
 Therefore want to have a stable and predictable solution that
can be priced competitively and which meets customer
requirements
Customers want to minimise risk and achieve a “Return on
Investment” - ROI
Evidence that something works helps both to sell the
“product” and also to reduce the price charged (by removing
uplift to cover risk)
The impact (benefits) of Information Technology
implementation are very rarely measurable in isolation
 People/Process/Technology
Explicit and measurable outcomes need to be agreed and
either a baseline or a comparison population is needed

3. Tele-Care and Tele-health

4. Tele-Care and Tele-health –
Success Factors

5. IT Supplier Success factors suitable
for HTA evaluation?
The Initiative delivers the stated objectives, or if that cannot
be measured:
The equipment works as designed!
Usability for staff and patients is high
The training materials are clear and easily followed
Limitations to use are clearly defined and documented
Equipment maintenance, cleaning and calibration
processes are clearly defined and straightforward
 Full compliance with interoperability standards – both
technical and semantic
Processes for managing upgrades and enhancement
requests are sufficiently rigorous to enable their impact to
be factored into HTA evaluations

6. Programme Success factors
suitable for HTA evaluation?
Are patient selection protocols clear, understood by
clinicians and followed appropriately?
Is appropriate equipment selected, deployed and tested in
the patient’s home?
Do patients demonstrate an understanding of why they have
been selected, what they have to do with the equipment and
how to seek help if problems arise?
Is the percentage of successful data acquisitions acceptable
and is the data processed in a sufficiently timely manner?
Do clinicians receive relevant and timely alerts or do they
express frustration with the quality of the service?

7. Summary
Information technology vendors and implementers are very
keen to be “evidence based”
Health Organisations need sound replicable data to
underpin the business case for IT investment
 Therefore HTA practitioners should be “pushing at an open
door”!
Clinical IT system implementations almost always involve
change management, process redesign and more project
management and training than is budgeted for!
Sir John Harvey-Jones famously said of planning something
which I believe equally applies to evaluating – I have taken
the liberty of substituting the word “evaluating” for his word
“planning” ..............

8. “Evaluating is an unnatural process; it
is much more fun to do something.
The nicest thing about not evaluating
is that failure comes as a complete
surprise, rather than being preceded
by a period of worry and depression.”