EU HTA Publication Digest: The EU-Joint Clinical Assessment Guidance Documents Fail to Address the Significance of Systematic Literature Reviews and Deviate from the State of the Art

MTRC shares the most relevant and impactful publications in the field of market access and HEOR for medical technologies in Europe through its EU HTA Publications Digest. 

In a recent publication, Smela et al. analyzed recommendations for systematic literature reviews within the EU Joint Clinical Assessment framework and compared them with established evidence-based medicine standards. The authors identified several methodological gaps, including the optional use of Embase, reliance on the outdated risk of bias version 1 tool, and the absence of a standardized approach to assessing the certainty of the overall body of evidence. They concluded that closer alignment with Cochrane and EUnetHTA guidance could improve the comprehensiveness, reliability, and reproducibility of JCA evidence assessments.

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