ABC of HTA

Health Technology Assessment, learned the way it's actually practised — by doing.

A new drug works. It's approved. Should your health system pay for it?

That one question has no obvious answer — and answering it well is an entire profession. This is where you learn it, from the ground up.

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Currently free — no sign-up needed

See it in action

Every lesson is something you do — predict, drag, calculate. Here's one in action.

"Approved" was never the hard part.

A regulator only asks whether a treatment is safe and works. It never asks the question that keeps health systems awake: is it worth it? Because every budget is finite, every pound spent on one treatment is a pound taken from another — often from patients you'll never see.

HTA is the discipline built around that uncomfortable question. It sits where medicine, statistics and economics collide — and almost nobody is trained in all three at once. This course is how you become someone who is.

By the end, you won't just know the terms. You'll be able to use them.

Read a clinical trial critically.

Tell signal from noise, and spot the three ways evidence quietly misleads.

See through a manufacturer's submission.

Recognise a flattering comparator or a convenient outcome before it costs a decision.

Weigh health against cost.

Understand what a QALY is, how cost-effectiveness is judged, and where the line gets drawn.

Be honest about uncertainty.

Know what a model can and can't prove — and where the real risks hide.

This is not a textbook with a login.

Learn by doing.

Every lesson is built around a decision you make, not a wall of text you skim. You'll get things wrong, see why, and remember it.

One idea at a time.

Concepts arrive in small, deliberate steps — each one earning its place before the next. No prior training assumed.

From first principles to practice.

Start with why any of this exists. Finish able to tear apart a real submission and defend a recommendation.

The same result can look impressive or trivial — depending on how it's framed. A lesson lets you feel the difference.

Never stuck on a term.

Every key concept is one tap away — click any highlighted word to see what it means right now, with a link to the full lesson when you're ready to go deeper. It all lives in one place.

Explore the glossary →

The whole field, in one arc.

Every module answers a piece of the same question — is this worth paying for?

  1. Why any of this exists

    Available

    The decision problem, opportunity cost, and why "approved" never means "funded."

    Opportunity costThe decision problemHTA vs regulatory approvalStakeholders & incentivesFraming with PICO

  2. Does it work? How sure are we?

    Available

    Reading studies, telling real effects from chance, and pulling all the evidence into one verdict.

    Study designs (RCT to case-control)Bias, confounding & chancep-values & confidence intervalsEffect measures: RR, OR, NNTSurvival analysis & hazard ratiosDiagnostic accuracy: sensitivity, specificity, ROCMeta-analysis, forest plots & GRADE

  3. Is it worth it?

    Available

    Measuring health itself, weighing benefit against cost, modelling the future, and facing uncertainty head-on.

    QALYs & utilities (EQ-5D)Costs, perspective & discountingThe ICER & cost-effectiveness planeWTP threshold & net benefitDecision trees & Markov modelsSensitivity analysis & PSABudget impact analysis

  4. The real world

    Coming soon

    What happens once the trial ends and ordinary patients start using the technology.

    Registries, claims & EHR dataPragmatic trialsPropensity scores & confoundingRWE in reimbursement

  5. How decisions get made

    Coming soon

    The agencies, the laws, the deals — and the special cases like rare diseases.

    NICE, IQWiG, HAS, AOTMiTEU HTA Regulation & Joint Clinical AssessmentPricing & risk-sharing agreementsOrphan drugs & rare diseasesMCDA, equity & medical devices

  6. Doing it for real

    Coming soon

    Taking apart a manufacturer's submission and writing a recommendation that holds up.

    Appraising a manufacturer's submissionWriting an HTA recommendationRed flags in a dossierCommunicating with a committee

70+ lessons planned across 15 modules — from first principles to practice.

Who this is for

Whether you're stepping into HTA for the first time or sharpening instincts you already have, this course is for you.

  • Newcomers to payers, HTA agencies, or pharma market-access teams
  • Clinicians and researchers who want to read evidence, not just trust it
  • Students of public health, pharmacy, economics or medicine
  • Anyone who's ever wondered how a health system decides what it can afford

No economics degree required. No statistics background assumed. Just curiosity and a willingness to think.

Who's behind this

More than a decade in healthcare — most of it in health technology assessment on the payer side: appraising clinical and economic evidence, shaping reimbursement methodology, and leading analytical teams, with a growing focus on the responsible use of AI in HTA. ABC of HTA distills that experience into a course built around doing the work, not just reading about it.

A treatment works. Now prove it's worth it.

That's the job. This is where you learn to do it.

Start the course →