HHS Deciding Whether to Revive its Future Tech Prediction Project

For the past five years until January, a team of federal contractors has been poring over academic journals, news reports and press releases in search of emerging technology that could change the outcome of clinical care.

The team's goal was to write reports containing lists of topics worth further research from the Department of Health and Human Services. The assessment team surfaced medical products and techniques such as “wearable artificial kidney for managing end-stage renal disease” or “joint-sparing knee implant[s] for treatment of knee osteoarthritis,” according to the team's report from last year.

The team looked into projects at varying stages of development, from a predicted six months to Food and Drug Administration approval to two years after approval.

Now, HHS’ contract with the Pennsylvania-based consulting firm ECRI Institute has run out, and HHS wants to know whether it should renew that program, called the Healthcare Horizon Scanning System.

The department is also looking into whether newer computational techniques such as natural language processing could help the research team churn through more articles, according to Elise Berliner, director of technology assessment at HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, who spoke to Nextgov. AHRQ oversees the Healthcare Horizon Scanning System.

“Right now, the reports are in PDF format, which isn’t very useful,” Berliner added. A new iteration of the product could involve machine-readable rankings, among other potential improvements.

HHS is also considering applying these search techniques to finding technology that could potentially reduce the cost of health care, according to a request for information posted this week.

The previous version focused on technology that satisfied an “unmet need” in patient care, Berliner said.

In its new request for information, HHS notes that trends scanned by the system could include:

• Generic versions of drugs that replace higher-priced ones
• New ways to use and acquire equipment including robotic surgery devices, imaging devices, and radiation therapy tools
• Ways to move treatment to inpatient to outpatient, and telehealth techniques
• New models for reimbursement, such as bundled payments or patient cost sharing

(Image via everything possible/Shutterstock.com)