Background: Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has been increasingly considered for decisions in health care policy in many countries but this trend is just beginning in Latin America. The Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) is a leader HTA agency that provides its reports to public and private institutions in Argentina.

Objectives: To describe the usefulness of Cochrane Systematic Reviews (SR) in the production of HTA documents by a weighty HTA agency in Argentina and to establish differences over time.

Methods: All HTA documents (rapid response documents, brief technical documents, and complete HTA) produced since 2000 will be assessed and will be classified as: (a) evaluating drugs; (b) therapeutic procedures; and (c) diagnostic procedures. Documents can be accessed through internet (www.iecs.org.ar). Pairs of independent researchers will evaluate the number of HTAs using SR, how much coincidence you found between the question of the HTA and the question of the SR that was used (very/enough/poor/not related), the contribution of the SR to answer the HTA’s question (entirely/enough/marginally/null), problems of the SR to answer de HTA’s question (non-updated SR, bad quality, applicability, none). Discrepancies will be solved by consensus. We will analyse separately Cochrane SR (CSR), and non-Cochrane SR (NCSR) and the NCSR/CSR ratio stratified by the previously mentioned classification. This analysis will be compared with a random sample of 100 HTAs published in the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) database during the year 2012.

Results: 315 HTA documents were published by IECS since the year 2000. The results will be presented at the Colloquium.