Kenneth Bond - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Kenneth Bond

International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 2020

Deliberative processes are a well-established part of health technology assessment (HTA) programs... more Deliberative processes are a well-established part of health technology assessment (HTA) programs in a number of high- and middle-income countries, and serve to combine complex sets of evidence, perspectives, and values to support open, transparent, and accountable decision making. Nevertheless, there is little documentation and research to inform the development of effective and efficient deliberative processes, and to evaluate their quality. This article summarizes the 2020 HTAi Global Policy Forum (GPF) discussion on deliberative processes in HTA.Through a combination of small and large group discussion and successive rounds of polling, the GPF members reached strong agreement on three core principles for deliberative processes in HTA: transparency, inclusivity, and impartiality. In addition, discussions revealed other important principles, such as respect, reviewability, consistency, and reasonableness, that may supplement the core set. A number of associated supporting actions ...

Value in Health, 2018

The systematic use of evidence to inform healthcare decisions, particularly health technology ass... more The systematic use of evidence to inform healthcare decisions, particularly health technology assessment (HTA), has gained increased recognition. HTA has become a standard policy tool for informing decision makers who must manage the entry and use of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other technologies (including complex interventions) within health systems, for example, through reimbursement and pricing. Despite increasing attention to HTA activities, there has been no attempt to comprehensively synthesize good practices or emerging good practices to support populationbased decision-making in recent years. After the identification of some good practices through the release of the ISPOR Guidelines Index in 2013, the ISPOR HTA Council identified a need to more thoroughly review existing guidance. The purpose of this effort was to create a basis for capacity building, education, and improved consistency in approaches to HTA-informed decision-making. Our findings suggest that although many good practices have been developed in areas of assessment and some other key aspects of defining HTA processes, there are also many areas where good practices are lacking. This includes good practices in defining the organizational aspects of HTA, the use of deliberative processes, and measuring the impact of HTA. The extent to which these good practices are used and applied by HTA bodies is beyond the scope of this report, but may be of interest to future researchers.

The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2008

Objective: To provide a descriptive overview of the clinical trials assessing meditation practice... more Objective: To provide a descriptive overview of the clinical trials assessing meditation practices for health care. Design: Systematic review of the literature. Comprehensive searches were conducted in 17 electronic bibliographic databases through September 2005. Other sources of potentially relevant studies included hand searches, reference tracking, contacting experts, and gray literature searches. Included studies were clinical trials with 10 or more adult participants using any meditation practice, providing quantitative data on health-related outcomes, and published in English. Two independent reviewers assessed study relevance, extracted the data, and assessed the methodological quality of the studies. Results: Four hundred clinical trials on meditation (72% described as randomized) were included in the review (publication years 1956-2005). Five broad categories of meditation practices were identified: mantra meditation, mindfulness meditation, yoga, t'ai chi, and qigong. The three most studied clinical conditions were hypertension, miscellaneous cardiovascular diseases, and substance abuse. Psychosocial measures were the most frequently reported outcomes. Outcome measures of psychiatric and psychological symptoms dominate the outcomes of interest. Overall, the methodological quality of clinical trials is poor, but has significantly improved over time by 0.014 points every year (95% CI, 0.005, 0.023). Conclusions: Most clinical trials on meditation practices are generally characterized by poor methodological quality with significant threats to validity in every major quality domain assessed. Despite a statistically significant improvement in the methodological quality over time, it is imperative that future trials on meditation be rigorous in design, execution, analysis, and the reporting of results.

Canadian Respiratory Journal, 2012

BACKGROUND: Pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research has been shown to be biased toward reporti... more BACKGROUND: Pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research has been shown to be biased toward reporting positive results. Frequent industry participation in trials assessing the efficacy of inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) and long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA) combination treatment makes assessing industry influence difficult and warrants an assessment of specific potential publication bias in this area.OBJECTIVE: To describe the frequency of industry involvement in ICS/LABA trials and explore associations among significant outcomes, type of industry involvement and type of primary outcome.METHODS: A systematic review of trials comparing ICS/LABA combination therapy with ICS monotherapy for asthma was conducted. Data concerning the type of industry sponsorship, primary outcome and statistical results were collected. Comparisons between type of sponsorship and significant results were analyzed using Pearson’s χ2test and relative risk.RESULTS: Of 91 included studies (median year of publication...

International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care

Including information and values from patients in HTA has the potential to improve both the proce... more Including information and values from patients in HTA has the potential to improve both the process and outcomes of health technology policy decisions. Accordingly, funding and structural incentives to include patients in HTA activities have increased over the past several years. Unfortunately, these incentives have not yet been accompanied by a corresponding increase in resources, time, or commitment to responsiveness. In this Perspectives piece, we reflect on our collective experiences participating in, conducting, and overseeing patient engagement activities within HTA to highlight the ethical challenges associated with this area of activity. While we remain committed to the idea that patient engagement activities strengthen the findings, relevance, and legitimacy of health technology policy, we are deeply concerned about the potential for these activities to do ethical harm. We use this analysis to call for action to introduce strong protections against ethical violations that m...

PloS one, 2016

Rapid reviews (RR), using abbreviated systematic review (SR) methods, are becoming more popular a... more Rapid reviews (RR), using abbreviated systematic review (SR) methods, are becoming more popular among decision-makers. This World Health Organization commissioned study sought to summarize RR methods, identify differences, and highlight potential biases between RR and SR. Review of RR methods (Key Question 1 [KQ1]), meta-epidemiologic studies comparing reliability/ validity of RR and SR methods (KQ2), and their potential associated biases (KQ3). We searched Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, grey literature, and checked reference lists, used personal contacts, and crowdsourcing (e.g. email listservs). Selection and data extraction was conducted by one reviewer (KQ1) or two reviewers independently (KQ2-3). Across all KQs, we identified 42,743 citations through the literature searches. KQ1: RR methods from 29 organizations were reviewed. There was no consensus on which aspects of the SR process to abbreviate. KQ2: Studies comparing the conclusions of RR and SR (n = 9) found them to be...

PloS one, 2017

Introduction Rapid reviews (RR), using abbreviated systematic review (SR) methods, are becoming m... more Introduction Rapid reviews (RR), using abbreviated systematic review (SR) methods, are becoming more popular among decision-makers. This World Health Organization commissioned study sought to summarize RR methods, identify differences, and highlight potential biases between RR and SR. Methods Review of RR methods (Key Question 1 [KQ1]), meta-epidemiologic studies comparing reliability/ validity of RR and SR methods (KQ2), and their potential associated biases (KQ3). We searched Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, grey literature, and checked reference lists, used personal contacts, and crowdsourcing (e.g. email listservs). Selection and data extraction was conducted by one reviewer (KQ1) or two reviewers independently (KQ2-3). Results Across all KQs, we identified 42,743 citations through the literature searches. KQ1: RR methods from 29 organizations were reviewed. There was no consensus on which aspects of the SR process to abbreviate. KQ2: Studies comparing the conclusions of RR and SR (n = 9) found them to be generally similar. Where major differences were identified, it was attributed to the inclusion of evidence from different sources (e.g. searching different databases or including different study designs). KQ3: Potential biases introduced into the review process were well-identified although not necessarily supported by empirical evidence, and focused mainly on selective outcome reporting and publication biases.

International journal of technology assessment in health care, 2016

Although consideration of ethical issues is recognized as a crucial part of health technology ass... more Although consideration of ethical issues is recognized as a crucial part of health technology assessment, ethics analysis for HTA is generally perceived as methodologically underdeveloped in comparison to other HTA domains. The aim of our study is (i) to verify existing tools for quality assessment of ethics analyses for HTA, (ii) to consider some arguments for and against the need for quality assessment tools for ethics analyses for HTA, and (iii) to propose a preliminary set of criteria that could be used for assessing the quality of ethics analyses for HTA. We systematically reviewed the literature, reviewed HTA organizations' Web sites, and solicited views from thirty-two experts in the field of ethics for HTA. The database and HTA agency Web site searches yielded 420 references (413 from databases, seven from HTA Web sites). No formal instruments for assessing the quality of ethics analyses for HTA purposes were identified. Thirty-two experts in the field of ethics for HTA ...

Healthcare Quarterly, Feb 1, 2007

Several reports have documented the prevalence and severity of emergency department (ED) overcrow... more Several reports have documented the prevalence and severity of emergency department (ED) overcrowding at specific hospitals or cities in Canada; however, no study has examined the issue at a national level. A 54-item, self-administered, postal and web-based questionnaire was distributed to 243 ED directors in Canada to collect data on the frequency, impact and factors associated with ED overcrowding. The survey was completed by 158 (65% response rate) ED directors, 62% of whom reported overcrowding as a major or severe problem during the past year. Directors attributed overcrowding to a variety of issues including a lack of admitting beds (85%), lack of acute care beds (74%) and the increased length of stay of admitted patients in the ED (63%). They perceived ED overcrowding to have a major impact on increasing stress among nurses (82%), ED wait times (79%) and the boarding of admitted patients in the ED while waiting for beds (67%). Overcrowding is not limited to large urban centres; nor is it limited to academic and teaching hospitals. The perspective of ED directors reinforces the need for further examination of effective policies and interventions to reduce ED overcrowding.

International journal of technology assessment in health care, 2014

Although value issues are increasingly addressed in health technology assessment (HTA) reports, H... more Although value issues are increasingly addressed in health technology assessment (HTA) reports, HTA is still seen as a scientific endeavor and sometimes contrasted with value judgments, which are considered arbitrary and unscientific. This article aims at illustrating how numerous value judgments are at play in the HTA process, and why it is important to acknowledge and address value judgments. A panel of experts involved in HTA, including ethicists, scrutinized the HTA process with regard to implicit value judgments. It was analyzed whether these value judgments undermine the accountability of HTA results. The final results were obtained after several rounds of deliberation. Value judgments are identified before the assessment when identifying and selecting health technologies to assess, and as part of assessment. They are at play in the processes of deciding on how to select, frame, present, summarize or synthesize information in systematic reviews. Also, in economic analysis, val...

CJEM, 2007

To identify the level of consensus among a group of Canadian emergency department (ED) experts on... more To identify the level of consensus among a group of Canadian emergency department (ED) experts on the importance of a set of indicators to document ED overcrowding. A 2-round Delphi survey was conducted from February 2005 to April 2005, with a multidisciplinary group of 38 Canadian experts in various aspects of ED operations who rated the relevance of 36 measures and ranked their relative importance as indicators of ED overcrowding. The response rates for the first and second rounds were 84% and 87%, respectively. The most important indicator identified by the experts was the percentage of the ED occupied by inpatients (mean on a 7-point Likert-type scale 6.53, standard deviation [SD] 0.80). The other 9 indicators, in order of the importance attributed, were the total number of ED patients (mean 6.35, SD 0.75), the total time in the ED (mean 6.16, SD 1.04), the percentage of time that the ED was at or above capacity (mean 6.16, SD 1.08), the overall bed occupancy (mean 6.19, SD 0.93...

CJEM, 2006

Relatively little is known about the ability of Canadian emergency departments (EDs) and the fede... more Relatively little is known about the ability of Canadian emergency departments (EDs) and the federal, provincial and territorial governments to quantify ED activity. The objectives of this study were to determine the use of electronic patient data in Canadian EDs, the accessibility of provincial data on ED visits, and to identify the data elements and current methods of ED information system (EDIS) data collection nationally. Surveys were conducted of the following 3 groups: 1) all ED directors of Canadian hospitals located in communities of >10,000 people, 2) all electronic EDIS vendors, and 3) representatives from the ministries of health from 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions who had knowledge of ED data collection. Of the 243 ED directors contacted, 158 completed the survey (65% response rate) and 39% of those reported using an electronic EDIS. All 11 EDIS vendor representatives responded. Most of the vendors provide a similar package of basic EDIS options, with add...

International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 2011

Objectives:The aim of this study was to critically examine the current guidance for conducting et... more Objectives:The aim of this study was to critically examine the current guidance for conducting ethics analysis in health technology assessment (HTA) and to offer recommendations for how to improve this practice.Methods:MEDLINE, Philosopher's Index, and Google Scholar were searched for articles and reports using the keywords “ethics” and “health technology assessment” and related terms. Bibliographies of all relevant articles were also examined for additional references. A philosophical analysis of the existing guidance was conducted.Results:We offer three recommendations for improving ethics analysis in HTA. First, ethical and legal issues must be clearly separated so that all policy-relevant questions that the technology raises can be considered clearly and systematically. Second, analysts must make better use of ethics theory and discuss better how particular theoretical approaches and associated analytic tools are selected to make transparent which alternative approaches were...