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Health technology assessment and priority setting for health policy in Sweden

This article describes the development of health technology assessment (HTA) in Sweden, its influence on decision making, and its link with priority setting. Sweden has a well established governmental HTA body, the Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care (SBU), and an increasing number of regional/local HTA organizations. HTA has had an impact on clinical practice and is used to some extent in policy decisions. Several initiatives have now been taken to develop processes for open priority setting of health-care services. With the establishment of a new agency to undertake reimbursement decisions on pharmaceuticals, and greater patient and public involvement in decision making, it seems inevitable that HTA will play a more important role in priority setting in the near future.