Latest HTA activities by Scottish Health Technology Group

The Scottish Health Technologies Group (SHTG) is a national health technology assessment (HTA) agency providing advice to NHSScotland on the use of new and existing health technologies (excluding medicines), likely to have a significant impact on healthcare. NHSScotland is required to consider SHTG advice.

In the third quarter of 2021, SHTG published only one report in relation to HeartFlow FFRCT for estimating fractional flow reserve from coronary CT angiography. The SHTG recommendation is based on guidance produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in 2017. The following key recommendations for NHSScotland were provided in the SHTG report:

• HeartFlow FFRCT is non-invasive, safe and, by improving specificity, may improve the diagnosis of obstructive versus nonobstructive coronary artery disease following computerized tomography-coronary angiography (CT-CA);
• HeartFlow FFRCT may be considered as an option alongside a set of complementary diagnostic tools for patients with stable, recent onset chest pain symptoms who have undergone CT-CA with adequate image quality on a 64-slice (or above) CT scanner;
• The use of Heartflow FFRCT has the potential to lead to cost savings, primarily driven by a reduction in referrals for invasive coronary angiography. There is uncertainty about the level of cost savings achievable due to variations in clinical practice when investigating chest pain and the use of different patient management strategies.

SHTG is working on the following assessments related to medical procedures or technologies (as of October 6, 2021):

• Closed-loop systems and the artificial pancreas for type I diabetes mellitus (T1DM)
• vCreate® (asynchronous platform)
• Dxcover ™ Brain Cancer Liquid Biopsy
• The SARUS (safer - airway - resuscitation) - CPR hood™
• The Scottish asynchronous digital dermatology appointment service (DDAS)
• Living Donor Transplantation
• Elective surgery using mesh to repair primary or incisional hernias in adults

See the full details in English here.

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