An early system for the identification and assessment of future health care technology - The Dutch STG project

This article is based on the report, Anticipating and Assessing Health Care Technology, written in the Netherlands between 1985-88. The project was ca rried out because of increasing concern in the Dutch Ministry of Health (ST G, then WVC) about the costs and benefits of new technologies for health ca fe. At that time, there were no established models for early identification , so the project was not only the most extensive such effort to that date, but had to develop its own methods. Overseen by a special commission, the p roject staff identified many future and emerging technologies in health car e and assessed selected technologies. Although the actual information produ ced was quickly dated and the project was discontinued in 1988, it did stim ulate the Ministry of Health to ask the Dutch Health Council (Gezondheidsra ad) to continuously identify important new technologies. The reports also d emonstrated the potential usefulness of such an effort to Dutch policy make rs, and probably to those in other countries as well.