Publications by authors named "Alessandra Lo Scalzo"

The establishment of health technology assessment (HTA) has been an important topic in Europe for many years. There have been a series of activities starting with first projects in 1994 leading to joint actions from the European Network of HTA (EUnetHTA) ending in 2021. This long interval of engagement with HTA structures, methodology, and processes by all member states led to a reliable basis for European collaboration in HTA.

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Objectives: The purpose of the European network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) is to make HTA agencies collaborate sharing methods and tools thus avoiding duplication of evaluative efforts and allowing resource savings. From 2010 to 2012, the activities of the network were carried out through EUnetHTA Joint Action 1 and Work Package 4 Strand B aimed at producing two Core HTAs with two main objectives: to test the Web based Core model and the collaborative working models. Our objective in this article is to give an historical record of the Work Package activities highlighting what worked and what did not in the collaboration of researchers' groups coming from different agencies.

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Article Synopsis
  • There is a growing focus on patient-centered health care and the need to include patients' perspectives in health technology assessments (HTA), which should inform decision-making processes. !* -
  • Currently, HTA primarily relies on quantitative evidence regarding clinical and cost effectiveness, often neglecting patients' views, which are sometimes dismissed as anecdotal or biased. !* -
  • To improve HTA, it's essential to gather robust evidence of patients' perspectives through rigorous social science research, and to actively engage patients at various stages of the HTA process to ensure their insights contribute to a transparent and fair deliberative process. !*
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Objectives: The aim of this study was to support health technology assessment (HTA) capacity building in Member States of the European Union with limited experience or without institutionalized HTA. The main output is a Handbook on HTA Capacity Building.

Methods: The methods used were worldwide surveys of (i) HTA organizations, (ii) information management units, and (iii) HTA educational programs.

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Purpose: To examine the psychometrics of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) among a sample of Italian physicians.

Method: The JSPE was translated into Italian using back-translation procedures to ensure the accuracy of the translation. The translated JSPE was administered to 778 physicians at three hospitals in Rome, Italy in 2002.

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Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the evidence of diagnostic accuracy of the wireless capsule for endoscopy (WCE) for the diagnosis of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (OGIB) and small bowel disease in adults and translate it to the context of the Italian National Health Service.

Methods: We performed a systematic review of secondary and primary literature. We reviewed WCE diagnostic accuracy, safety, economic evaluations for OGIB.

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This cross-cultural study was designed to compare the attitudes of physicians and nurses toward physician-nurse collaboration in the United States, Israel, Italy and Mexico. Total participants were 2522 physicians and nurses who completed the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (15 Likert-type items, (Hojat et al., Evaluation and the Health Professions 22 (1999a) 208; Nursing Research 50 (2001) 123).

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