HTA in CEE Countries: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research

Abstract

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is an impartial old medical technology assessment tool used by health policymakers to aid in reimbursement decisions. Although HTA is usually adopted by wealthy countries given the surplus in financial and human capital, yet, nowadays, more and more low and middle income (LMIC) countries are realizing the value of HTA in the long run and are starting to adopt this tool for healthcare reimbursement decisions. Aim: This study aims to provide a summary of the existing academic research related to the field of HTA in nine Central and East European Countries (CEE), namely; Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Serbia. Materials and methods: A Scoping literature review was done by the authors for the published journal articles in “Scopus” database to date. The search criteria were set for academic articles written in the English language with full text available. The resulting articles were further skimmed to include only those articles from such journals which were indexed in the “Scimago” ranking system. Extracted articles were analyzed quantitatively using Excel 365, SPSS, and R studio software. Results: 94 full-text academic articles were finally extracted for the analysis. 47% of HTA related literature was published in Q1 journals, 38% in Q2 journals, 11% in Q3 journals, and less than 1% in Q4 journals. 67% of the papers were published in the past 4 years (2016-2019). “International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care”, “Value in Health: Regional Issues” and “Health Policy” were the top three journals with the highest number of publications in the field. Leading articles, countries, and authors in the field were identified based on the number of papers generated and citation scores. Conclusion: The scoping review methodology seems to be an excellent tool to investigate emerging topics such as HTA. To the authors’ knowledge, no previous researchers have recorded the entirety of scholarly conversation in this field. Regional research progression in the field has started to gain attraction in the past 4 years indicated by the number of publications. Further directions were suggested to help field researchers in building their research framework.