About The ITA

About The ITA

Faculty Expertise and Research Focus

Institute faculty have training and expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, economics, decision science, outcomes analysis, health care policy and regulatory law. Research activities emphasize the evaluation of non-drug technologies, including devices, diagnostics, and procedures. A unique focus is on the evaluation of technologies during the early stages of development, from discovery to preliminary clinical testing, when extensive data regarding clinical effectiveness may not yet be available. In these instances, computer models are utilized in order to simulate expected outcomes (using the methods of decision analysis), and thereby predict costs, effectiveness, and overall impact on the healthcare system.

Our Goals

The specific goals of the ITA are to:

Support investigators with core expertise including decision science, economics, clinical epidemiology, statistics, and outcomes analysis.
Conduct research in methodologies that will enhance clinical decision analysis and technology assessment.
Focus the development and assessment of technologies that will result in significant improvements in the quality of patient care.
Facilitate the design and implementation of clinical trials emphasizing studies that lead to significant improvements in the quality of patient care.
Provide an environment that supports the research activities of residents, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty.
Develop educational programs to transfer this knowledge to students, residents, health care providers, policy makers, private industry and the public.

Department and Institutional Grounding

The formation of the Institute acknowledges the increased breadth of research activities and the active involvement of investigators from a wide group of disciplines. From a historical and content perspective, the departmental home has been and remains appropriately in Radiology. However, the Institute is now recognized as an institutional program, and has important connections to many departments and programs throughout the Massachusetts General Hospital.

ITA's Tenth Anniversary in 2007

The ITA was founded in October of 1997 by Dr. G. Scott Gazelle. Originally named the Decision Analysis and Technology Assessment (DATA) Group, its original members in addition to Dr. Gazelle were Elkan F. Halpern, Phd, and Kevin P. Farr. To recognize its growth and multi-departmental nature, the DATA Group became the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment in 2002 and celebrated its 10-Year Anniversary in October of 2007.