Dr. Máirín Ryan:

All of the reports are publicly available on the website but I am happy to provide the committee with copies of the technical reports, including the advice section which outlines the main findings of each report.

Our role is to provide advice specifically to the Minister and his Department on major national health policy decisions and to the executive of the HSE with regard to national service decisions. In regard to the HTAs that we have done to date, a number of them focus on public health programmes. For example, in regard to cancer screening, we did a HTA that led to the introduction of BowelScreen, the colorectal cancer screening programme. We also did a HTA in relation to breast cancer and surveillance for women who are elevated risk before the age for BreastCheck. We are currently doing a HTA on HPV testing for CervicalCheck. We have also looked at vaccination programmes such as HPV vaccination for girls and BCG for boys. In acute services, I mentioned earlier that the HTA on mechanical thrombectomy will be published tomorrow. We have also looked at other interventions such as robotic surgery and referral thresholds for surgical procedures in terms of the criteria that the surgeon requires a patient to meet before he or she proceeds to surgery, with the view that providing that information means that we will not have patients being referred necessarily to the outpatients, which patients should be more appropriately managed in primary care. We have also looked at a number of interventions in primary care. For example, we have done a HTA on smoking cessation interventions, including drug therapies, counselling, telephone supports and so on. We have also included e-cigarettes. That is the first time this has been done in a national HTA. We have done HTAs in a whole range of areas.