Since its foundation in 1988, iMTA has played a key role in HTA research in the Netherlands, in Europe and worldwide. iMTA offers expertise in health economic modelling, cost analysis, and outcomes research and is dedicated to the use of cost-effectiveness information in healthcare decision making. Its staff consists of about 30 scientists from different disciplines, including economics, econometrics, medicine, psychology, epidemiology, mathematics and pharmacy. iMTA is part of Erasmus University of Rotterdam.
iMTA has shaped many of the key theoretical and methodological choices in the relatively young field of cost-effectiveness analysis. iMTA is known for advocating the ‘societal perspective’: the idea that benefits and costs outside of health are important, such as productivity losses and caregiver burden. We stimulated the development of cost-effectiveness acceptability curves, the friction cost-method, methods for the assessment of caregiver burden, the first valuation studies of the EQ-5D-5L, the development and assessment of proportional shortfall and the introduction of model validation tools.
