Ethical soundness of health technology assessment reports in Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract

Background: Health technology assessment (HTA) is a conventional method for evaluating reasonable use of health technologies in many countries. Aims: To investigate the ethical soundness of HTA studies in Islamic Republic of Iran. Methods: All HTA reports published by the HTA office until 2020 were reviewed using the HTA Core Model and the Q-SEA questionnaires. Results: We evaluated 91 reports for ethical soundness. The research question, literature search and inclusion/exclusion criteria were included in 91.2%, 83.5% and 82.4% of the HTA reports, respectively. Only 13.2% of the reports explicitly stated the objective of the analysis and 6.6% stated the ethics framework. Only 2.2%, 4.4%, 9.9%, 9.9%, 14.3%, and 2.2%, respectively, of the reports, complied with the completeness, bias, policy implications, other implications, conceptual clarification, and conflicting values. Conclusions: HTA reports in the Islamic Republic of Iran require coordinated and integrated framework acceptable to all stakeholders to ensure their compliance with sound ethical requirements.