To celebrate 50 years since the founding of SDA Bocconi, this space hosts a selection of ideas generated by our Faculty that have made their mark in the landscape of management research. Relevant and concrete, conducted with scientific rigor and impactful for our society: these are the four pillars underpinning the pathway we propose. The SDA Insight initiative falls under the broader umbrella project, “50 Years of Ideas.”
Assessing medical devices has been a focus of attention by the European Commission (EC) for the past few decades. For this reason, the EC has funded several research projects and co-financed the network of Heath Technology Assessment (HTA) Agencies of Member States (UEnetHTA). An example is the three-year research project MEDTECHTA (Methods for health technology assessment of medical devices: A European perspective), financed in 2015 by the European Union and headed by Bocconi in collaboration with five other European universities. This initiative upgraded the assessment process for medical devices by proposing concrete methodological solutions. The aim was to make the decision-making process regarding resource allocation for various technologies more solid, robust and transparent. Initially, the study examined and compared different approaches for assessing medical devices at a global level and for accessing the market. What clearly emerged from this mapping activity was the uneven access to medical devices among EU Member States. Also analyzed were the factors underlying the divergency in the adoption rate. The MEDTECHTA research team came up with a new and improved methodological framework for assessing medical devices, testing this approach in various phases of development and distribution of these devices in the healthcare system. This laid the foundations for improving the assessment process for medical devices and optimizing their dissemination. The work produced by MEDTECHTA was followed up by another EU-funded project – COMED – which fine-tuned the methodological guidelines for healthcare technology even further, in this case including digital technologies as well.
