Valuing Diagnostic Innovations: Towards Responsible Health Technology Assessment

Abstract

Diagnostic innovation is increasingly perceived as an institutional interplay with many heterogeneous stakeholders in which users are more proactively involved in diagnosis. This challenges traditional Health Technology Assessment (HTA) practices, focusing on efficacy, safety, quality, and costs. Other values become important in diagnostic innovations, including social and ethical norms, expectations, positions, and distributed roles of stakeholders. This chapter asks which set of values, which logic of valuing could be leading in such new practices of HTA for diagnostic innovations. It zooms in on the current logic of valuing in HTA. It presents various empirical cases reporting on diagnostic innovations, and reflects on how HTA strategies, policies, and interventions for practitioners and users of diagnostic innovations could be more flexible and responsible.