D4.2 – Report on focus groups and interviews
A method for judging health technologies is only as good as the agreement of the people who would have to use it. Having designed such a method in the previous deliverable, FLASH put it in front of those who make these decisions every day: policymakers, hospital evaluators, health economists, industry, patient representatives and regional development agencies. The question at the centre of the exercise was deceptively simple. When a technology is still years away from the market, what should actually count in deciding whether to back it? Cost is the obvious answer, but the consultation set out to test whether it is the only one.
Twenty five experts were consulted through three complementary methods. Two focus groups gathered fifteen of them: seven local experts drawn from the Subcommittee for the Adoption of Innovation in the Health System of the Catalan Government, and eight international experts convened in Ghent in April 2024 during the plenary meeting of the Vanguard Initiative Smart Health Pilot, in order to test whether the approach travels beyond Catalonia. Four one to one interviews added perspectives that the group setting could not accommodate, and a questionnaire sent to 42 people, returning 22 completed replies, served as a second Delphi style iteration to confirm and refine the results. Each session followed the same three part structure: validation of the methodology, prioritisation of the PESTLE dimensions (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental), and open brainstorming of candidate indicators. Experts agreed that factors in all six dimensions can enable or block adoption, with economic factors rated highest and political factors lowest, a result the report reads against the new EU Health Technology Assessment Regulation applying from January 2025. The consultation produced a catalogue of indicators for each dimension, each with a proposed measurement scale, and the design of a two dimensional decision matrix in which the most relevant political, social, technological, legal and environmental indicators are set against five economic ones, weighted according to the relevance perceived by the experts.
What the deliverable contains:
- The design of the consultation: selection criteria for experts, two focus groups, four interviews and a questionnaire used as a second iteration
- Anonymised profiles of the 25 experts consulted, by gender, position and role in the innovation ecosystem
- Findings on the perceived relevance of the six PESTLE dimensions as enablers of or barriers to adoption
- A catalogue of candidate indicators for each dimension, with measurement scales, from alignment with system priorities to ecological footprint
- The design of the decision matrix, with the weighting of each dimension and the five economic indicators retained
- Eleven conclusions feeding into the guidelines for policymakers planned as the next deliverable