With the development of health technology assessments, the public are increasingly aware of the importance of assessing timeliness for health decision-making, which emerges the requirement for early and timely assessment for emerging health technologies. Providing early and timely assessments prior to a technology accesses the market or prior to implementation can provide decision-makers with sufficient time to develop an application program for a new technology. This paper mainly summarizes the profiles of three emerging health technology horizon scanning systems in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, and compares and analyzes their related contents, thus providing reference experience for the construction of emerging health technology horizon scanning system in China.
Against the backdrop of the rapid development of modern medical science and technology and the continuous advancement of China's medical innovation policies, the early management of innovative health technologies is still trapped in a vicious circle of "failure to effectively identify the potential of technological value" and "unclear entry points for policy intervention". China's medical innovation model still has the characteristics of passive follow-up, lacking a continuous monitoring mechanism and attention channels for cutting-edge health technologies. Horizon scanning (HS) can systematically identify (rather than randomly discover) emerging technologies that may have potential impacts on health, medical services and/or society, as well as outdated and soon-to-be eliminated technologies. It provides a scientific basis for innovation incentives, resource allocation and the formulation of relevant policies, and is an important international tool for exploring and discovering innovative technologies. This paper systematically sorts out the conceptual connotation, development history and standardized implementation path of HS, and demonstrates the application value of HS in specific medical scenarios through typical cases. In general, HS can expand the forward-looking vision of decision-makers, improve the full-life-cycle evaluation system of health technologies, and promote the transformation of China's medical innovation from passive follow-up to leading development. For the localized application of this technology in China, it is necessary to clarify its conceptual boundaries, application scenarios and implementation paths with early health technology assessment. It is hoped that this paper can promote the application and development of HS, a new technical tool, in China's health field, and provide methodological references for subsequent related research.