Health Technology Assessment and Health Economics scientific production: some indicators

1. Health Technology Assessment and Health Economics scientific production: some indicators Cibele Araújo Camargo Marques dos Santos1, Maria Fazanelli Crestana2, Nair Yumiko Kobashi3, Evelinda Trindade4 1. Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo – FMUSP - cibele@biblioteca.fm.usp.br 2. Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo – FMUSP – crestana@usp.br 3. Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo – ECA - nairkobashi@usp.br 4. Instituto do Coração - Núcleo de Avaliação de Tecnologias em Saúde – NATS - HC/FMUSP – evelinda.trindade@incor.usp.br HTAi 2011 - HTA for Health System Sustainability, 27 a 29 june Introduction The level of scientific activities may be mapped through information metric studies allied to information organization methods in order to assess science and to set research policies, signifying priority areas for funding. Bibliographic databases records analyses permit mapping with data collection and resource economies, emphasizing the importance of information resources. Objective To understand the scientific activity output through published scientific articles indexed with «Health Technology Assessment» and «Health Economics», (14th chapter of the 24 sub-agendas of the National Agenda of Priorities in Health Research (ANPPS) - Brazilian Ministry of Health with feature topics such as innovation, acquisition, use and obsolescence of health technology and as economic evaluation or cost analysis in healthcare). Methods • A sample of records indexed in the LILACS database were analysed after it was reformatted specifically for this purpose. • 37 journal titles in health sciences published between 2003 and 2007. • 7603 articles of the sample were compared with the indexed terms in the 14th sub-agenda of ANPPS. • Thematic analysis was performed to depict related production situation and its evolution. • Key issues or keywords in these articles were also reviewed. Results During the period studied, there were a total of 266 articles related to the 14th ANPPS sub-agenda, 3.5% of the total number of articles were indexed with «Health Technology Assessment» and «Health Economics» or included related content, showing a slight annual growth of number of published articles. Conclusions and discussion • Although the ANPPS represents the National Health Research Policy, the 14th ANPPS sub-agenda themes are not rated among the most searched topics. This situation may be related to education, information and technology problems in Brazil. • Health Technology research is, thus, a target for greater incentives.