About this toolkit

This toolkit contains SHTG recommendations for health technologies. SHTG recommendations are intended to inform effective, safe, patient focused and best value use of health technologies across Scotland. A 'health technology' is an intervention, product or service developed to prevent, diagnose or treat medical conditions; promote health; provide rehabilitation; or organise healthcare delivery. The health technologies considered by SHTG include tests, devices, procedures, talking therapies, digital healthcare, programmes or systems. SHTG does not consider medicines.

NHSScotland is required to consider our advice.

SHTG Programme Manager - email his.shtg@nhs.scot 

Content has been checked for accessibility in line with the relevant RDS standard operating procedure.

Evidence-based SHTG recommendations are developed by a national committee in consultation with stakeholders. Clinical effectiveness, safety, and cost effectiveness evidence are considered; alongside patient and public views, professional expert views, and social and organisational implications. The recommendations can include an adaptation of an HTA conducted elsewhere in the UK or internationally, which includes consultation with experts in Scotland.

The SHTG recommendation process involves clinicians and people with lived experience. Patient and public views and professional expert views are considered during the development of the recommendations. 

All SHTG recommendations are made by SHTG council which is in turn signed off by the SHTG unit head, SHTG chair and the director of Evidence and Digital in Healthcare Improvement Scotland (the parent organisation for SHTG) before being published.

SHTG recommendations are not regularly reviewed and do not change unless the topic is brought back to SHTG council to make amendments, however the website content will be reviewed annually on 1st November.

© Healthcare Improvement Scotland 2024 This toolkit is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This allows for the copy and redistribution of this document as long as Healthcare Improvement Scotland is fully acknowledged and given credit. The material must not be remixed, transformed or built upon in any way. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The content of each recommendation is checked for copyright before publication. 

The use of Flaticon images is covered by the licence paid by Tactuum as software provider of the RDS platform.

This toolkit has been checked and tested by the SHTG team.

We welcome feedback on this toolkit, feedback and complaints should be sent to the SHTG team mailbox his.shtg@nhs.scot. The SHTG programme manager will decide if feedback requires any changes to toolkit content. When changes are minor they will be made by an SHTG project officer, and when major they will be sent to the SHTG lead, and a decision taken at the next SHTG Council meeting. 

The toolkit has been risk assessed, and there are there are no associated patient safety risks.