Technology assessment in healthcare: a means for pursuing the goals of biomedical engineering.

The goals of biomedical engineering include the improvement of health and life quality of mankind. However, the contribution of biomedical engineering to those worthy ends must be more clearly related. Biomedical engineers should become more active in demonstrating to policymakers and other parties in healthcare the value of the contributions of healthcare technology. Technology assessment (TA) is a form of investigation designed to identify and evaluate the implications of technologies so as to inform policymaking. Among the important trends in TA that should be of special interest to biomedical engineers are the increasingly higher methodological standards for accepting evidence from clinical investigations, and the use of quality-of-life measures for determining how technologies affect people's lives.