Health Technology Wales has published the results of its latest adoption audit report which shows that awareness of its guidance is high across Wales.
The organisation, which is funded by Welsh Government and hosted by the Velindre University NHS Trust, assesses non-medicine health and care technologies, and publishes national guidance on their use in Wales. It carries out an adoption audit annually to find out whether HTW guidance recommendations have been adopted by health boards in Wales.
This year’s audit focused on 11 pieces of HTW guidance and three pieces of NICE Medical Technologies Evaluation (MTEP) guidance. Key findings from this year’s audit include:
- Responses from organisations where the guidance was relevant indicate that awareness of the guidance is high (79%), clarity of guidance recommendations is very good (96%), and guidance is having an impact in the majority of cases (72%). These figures are consistent with, or an improvement on last year’s audit.
- While the clarity of the guidance was reported as high, there were some instances where organisations did not fully understand the remit of HTW guidance. There were comments around the lack of information on where funding and extra resources would come from, and questions around implementation of the technology, which is not within the remit of HTW guidance.
- Generally, HTW guidance that recommends routine adoption of a technology was adhered to. Though there were a few examples where organisations had not adhered to the recommendation or were unsure if they would.
- For HTW guidance that “partially supports” routine adoption, organisations generally either did not feel the guidance was sufficient to change commissioning policy or clinical practice, or were unsure.
- All three pieces of NICE guidance audited recommended the use of a technology. The impact on decision-making of the three pieces of guidance was variable, ranging from no impact to major impact.
To find out more and read the HTW 2023/24 Adoption Audit Report in full click here.
