OBJECTIVES: Early health technology assessment (HTA) is a valuable tool that informs decision-making at early stages of development, facilitating go-no-go decisions, and providing developers with key information on drivers of cost-effectiveness which can improve the economic viability of their products. The objective of this research was to provide an update on current developments in early HTA conducted in the United Kingdom (UK). Several published reviews have covered developments until 2016; therefore, we focused on literature published since 2017.

METHODS: A literature review was conducted to identify empirical studies that reported on the implementation of early HTA in the UK. Searches were run in Embase and Medline in June 2023, with a filter to identify English language literature published since 2017. Hand-searching of reference lists of included literature reviews was also conducted to supplement the database searches.

RESULTS: Eighteen articles reporting findings of 18 empirical studies met the criteria for inclusion; two of these studies discussed early HTA in the context of European cross-country analysis, including the UK. The included articles reported data related to 16 different technologies being assessed: diagnostic tests or screening tools (n=6), drugs (n=6), prevention programmes (n=3), devices (n=2), and surgical techniques (n=1). Early economic models were utilised in 17 studies, including headroom and/or value-of-information analyses in eight of them, while multicriteria decision analyses were conducted in the last study. As early HTA utilizes an often-limited evidence base, comprehensive sensitivity analyses were conducted to quantify uncertainties in the absence of solid clinical effect estimates and final pricing guidelines.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the conclusions of other reviews published on the topic. One limitation of the current research is that no Medical Subject Headings and well-defined keywords exist in the field of early HTA; therefore, our searches might not have identified all published literature in this topic.