The Regional Base of Health Technology Assessment Reports of the Americas (BRISA) provides free access to bibliographic information on health technology assessments prepared and published by member institutions of the Health Technology Assessment Network of the Americas (RedETSA). BRISA is the first open regional virtual library that centralizes Health Technology Assessment reports that, otherwise, would be dispersed or inaccessible, and makes them available to institutions, authorities and health workers, takers decision makers, researchers and citizens in general. BRISA allows us to learn about the experience of other countries and avoid duplication of efforts, promotes the incorporation of cost-effective health technologies, contributes to their appropriate use and prevents the use of health supplies that do not contribute to people's well-being.
This initiative, a pioneer in the Americas, was developed in collaboration with the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Health Sciences Information (BIREME) through the Virtual Health Library (VHL). The technological platform and the methodology for recording, organizing and disseminating the reports were developed by BIREME, in coordination with the Technical Unit of Medicines and Technologies (MT) in Health of the Department of Health Systems and Services (HSS) of PAHO/ WHO, which serves as the RedETSA Secretariat. The platform was launched during the IX Annual Meeting of RedETSA, held in Panama City, on November 14, 2017. The VHL hosts the database, which makes it possible to cross-reference the searched topic with other available databases, such as LILACS and Medline.
With the BRISA database, PAHO and RedETSA seek to promote the use of HTA to improve the decision-making process of incorporating technologies in health systems, improving access and equity when distributing resources. .
BRISA is constantly growing, in 2023 it reached more than 3,000 shared reports in Spanish, Portuguese, French and English.
The BRISA platform
The technological platform and the methodology for registration, organization and dissemination of the reports were developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Health Sciences Information (BIREME), in coordination with the Technical Unit of Medicines and Technologies (MT) in Health of the Department of Health Systems and Services (HSS) of PAHO/WHO, which serves as the Secretariat of the RedETSA.
The platform was launched during the IX Annual Meeting of the Health Technology Assessment Network of the Americas (RedETSA), held in Panama City on November 14, 2017.
The BVS hosts the database, which makes it possible to cross-reference the searched topic with other available databases, such as LILACS and Medline.
How to search in BRISA?
The published reports include the title of the publication, author(s), year of publication, summary and link to the full text.
BRISA contains a search engine and filters by main subject, institution, country of publication, language and year. They are also classified by terms of the DeCS thesaurus – Descriptors in Health Sciences, maintained by BIREME, promoting the recovery of this content in the Portuguese, Spanish, English and French languages.