Methods to include environmental impacts in health technology assessments

Abstract

In the Australian health system, Government reimbursement decisions are often made on the basis of opportunity costs. The methods used to inform these decisions are health economic evaluation and health technology assessment. These consider the costs and consequences of alternative courses of action and have not traditionally considered environmental impacts. There is interest in Australia and elsewhere in understanding methods to include environmental impacts in health technology assessment in the pursuit of minimising the environmental and climate change impact of health technologies. The thesis found that economic evaluation frameworks are a useful way to estimate and present the environmental impact of health technologies. Further work is needed to understand how these can most usefully be implemented to inform HTA decisions in Australia and globally.