History and structure
The CAHTA was created in 1994, as a successor of the former Catalan Office for Health Technology Assessment (COHTA) created in 1991. CAHTA is a non-profit public agency affiliated to the Catalan Health Service. CAHTA's structure consists of an Executive Committee, a Scientific Committee, a Director, and a multidisciplinary technical staff.

Mission
CAHTA's mission is to promote the production and utilization of scientific knowledge to improve the prevention of diseases and health and quality of life of the Catalan population. This mission is two-fold:

1. To promote research oriented to health and healthcare services needs of the population and to knowledge needs of the healthcare system itself.
2. To encourage the introduction, adoption, diffusion and utilization of health technologies according to proven scientific knowledge and the criteria of efficacy, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency, while promoting the needs assessment and equity analysis in the delivery and financing of healthcare services.

Since 1999 CAHTA has also assumed the responsibility of designing and implementing a new health research strategy for Catalonia.

How CAHTA works
CAHTA combines different study methodologies in its assessments. Primary data, secondary data, and data synthesis may be included in the process.
The activities of the CAHTA - at request and by own initiative - take place within the public Catalan healthcare system, industry, insurance companies, research units, and users in Catalonia, Spain, and abroad.
CAHTA is also a collaborating center of the World Health Organization (WHO), developing various support tasks on HTA and promoting use of proper health technologies.

Dissemination activities
A quarterly newsletter, an annual report, assessment reports, scientific journal articles, a collection of report abstracts and technical informative notes are published in Catalan and Spanish. Some of the reports are available in English as well.

CAHTA full texts of our HTA reports are placed on CAHTA's website (www.aatrm.net) free of charge for everyone.

The CAHTA's teaching activities are developed at under-and postgraduate level and in ongoing training, in contact (group and individual) or online learning. The sphere of action is local, national and international, covering hospitals, primary health care centres, universities, health administrations and private agents (industry, pharmaceutical companies, consultant companies). The world of virtual education and distance learning is also among CAHTA's teaching activities with a joint venture with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), organizing the courses "Assessment in healthcare services" and "Information Skills for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Health Sciences".

When specific gaps in knowledge are identified during the HTA process, CAHTA requests specific research projects, commissioning and financing external research. Since 1996, 6 calls for research has been developed, prioritizing, selecting and funding more than 125 research projects with a total budget of 4,778.047 EUR coming from the Catalan health and research departments.

Moreover CAHTA has given support in the elaboration of research (R+D) plan of the Catalan Government, the management of calls for research projects on behalf of other institutions (for instance, the annual Catalan public Telethon calls for biomedical research), and the assessment of the reports of these and other calls for research not directly managed by the CAHTA.

Actually, CAHTA is leading the work package 8 (Systems to support HTA in member states with limited institutionalization of HTA) of the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA). Its objective is to define minimum components related to the scope, structure, process and visibility of an HTA organization and to develop tools for education support to institutions or healthcare systems in the process of evolving to/building an HTA organization/capacity.

Current projects (a selection)

• Waiting lists management for surgical procedures in the Spanish National Health System
• Breast reconstruction after breast cancer removal 
• Early detection test for HIV infection
• Register of arthroplasties in Catalonia
• Assessment of the therapeutic procedure and its results in digestive oncology
• Register of positron emission tomography (PET) scans and assessment of its therapeutical impact in oncology
• Register of intracoronary brachitherapy.

Future plans

• To foster the alliance and collaboration of other organizations to improve the quality of the health care services.
• To support and encourage developing clinical practice guidelines groups and determining its audit and implementation as a result of transferring the scientific knowledge into the clinical practice.
• HTA information for patients
• To carry out primary studies on outcomes research.