History and structure
The Institute of Applied Health Science (IAHS) was formed in 1999 by incorporating the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU), the Dept of Public Health, the Dept of Primary Care and General Practice, and others. HERU and HSRU are core funded by the Scottish Government, but receive additional grants, eg, from the UK Health Technology Assessment Programme. Since 2000, IAHS has produced technology assessment reports (TARs) for NICE. HSRU runs several HTA trials and is part of a "Review Body" for the NICE Interventional Procedures Programme.

IAHS is the editorial home of the Cochrane Incontinence Group and co-convenes the Cochrane Economics Methods Group. IAHS members contribute to the Cochrane Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders Group and other Cochrane reviews. Key academic interests in HTA include non-pharmacological interventions, diabetes care, and screening.

Mission

• To provide a service to the UK National Health Service via NICE and the HTA programme
• To undertake and publish high-quality HTAs, both systematic reviews and primary research, both incorporating economic evaluations
• To consider the methodologies of HTA, especially "rapid reviews" such as TARs and pragmatic trials of non-drug technologies.

How the HTA Group of IAHS works
IAHS incorporates a wide range of disciplines and skills. TARs are performed by small, core teams representing information science, systematic reviews, epidemiology/public health, health economics, and statistics. The teams are supplemented on an ad hoc basis according to the needs of individual reviews, eg, from relevant clinical specialties. Advisory panels of clinical experts, methodologists, and patient representatives are convened for each review. All reviews are peer reviewed. The trials are coordinated from a formal trials service.

Dissemination activities
TARs can be disseminated for NICE in at least five ways: 1) the reports are released by NICE as part of their consultation process, eg, via their website; 2) they are published as HTA monographs by the NCCHTA, both on paper and electronically; 3) short versions are often submitted for publication in medical journals; 4) they are listed in the HTA database in the Cochrane Library and some TARs, or parts of them, are converted to Cochrane reviews; and 5) the reports may be presented at conferences eg, HTAi.

Current projects

• TARS related to non-drug technologies (eg laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair) and diabetic care (eg treatment of diabetic foot ulcers)
• Efficacy and safety reviews of interventional procedures (eg laser surgery for the correction of refractive error)
• Cochrane reviews (especially diabetes, incontinence, surgery)
• Multicentre trials (eg of knee replacement, fracture prevention)
• Methodological work (eg on literature searching for HTAs; conduct of pragmatic trials).

Future plans in HTA

• Further TARs for NICE; topics to be decided by UK Health Departments
• Further Cochrane reviews especially in diabetes and incontinence
• Further assessments of new interventional procedures
• Further large-scale pragmatic trials of non-drug technologies.