Keeping pace with new technologies: systems needed to identify and evaluate them

Of the three major pressures on health services worldwide—changing demography, growing expectations, and new healthcare interventions (technologies) —the last is generating the most concern and the most dramatic responses. New healthcare technologies are becoming more numerous, more expensive, and possibly more effective than ever before. About 50 new drugs are launched each year, and the number of new devices, procedures, and ways of providing...