The board of Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) has approved the formation of a Special Interest Group on Coverage with Evidence Development (CED), facilitated by Kalipso Chalkidou and Sean Tunis.  The group serves as a comon forum for sharing and advancing work in this topic area.  The SIG is currently considering the scope of interest which may include other forms of conditional reimbursement, such as risk sharing schemes.
 
The first agenda item for this SIG was for the collection of appropriate terminology to use for CED-like projects and how CED-like projects could be operationally defined. Having a common language to describe policy initiatives related to CED and other forms of conditional reimbursement allows for the facilitation of future collaboration and information exchange.  After a lively and insightful discussion about the terminology to describe health technologies that are used in the context of data collection, Use with Evidence Development (UED), defined as any health policy initative that links use of health care technology to a requirement for data collection, with the intent of informaing future decision making,  was deemed most appropriate.
 
Dev Menon and collegues from the University of Alberta are currently working with the listserv to create a structured inventory of all UED-like projects.  This inventory will be invaluable in determing successful models, frequent challenges, and potential collaborative opportunities that will push UED forward to help ensure that healthcare decision-makers have sufficient evidence on emerging technologies upon which to base clinical and policy decisions in the future.

In order to accomplish this task, a brief questionaire has been circulated to obtain basic information about completed, ongoing, or planned projects that involve "Use with Evidence Development."  This form is also available on the Special Interest Group portion of the HTAi website.  The inventory collected will be available to all members of the HTAi UED Special Interest Group.  If you have any questions, please contact randee.kastner@cmtpnet.org