A disruptive technology has been defined as an innovation that completely changes the way things are done. Early identification of potential disruptive health technologies has become a key point in the agenda of decision makers and health technology assessment (HTA) bodies. The PriTec tool is an automatically executable web application that was developed in 2009 by the Galician HTA Agency to facilitate decision-making regarding the selection of technologies for post-launch observation. The tool has been updated to allow scoring and ranking of technologies before their introduction into the healthcare portfolio. The aim of this work was to propose a framework for assessing the usefulness of the PriTec tool in relation to identifying possible disruptive innovations.

To evaluate the applicability of the PriTec tool for distinguishing disruptive from non-disruptive innovations, we selected a few examples from prior acknowledged disruptive and non-disruptive innovations. These technologies were scored against the predefined criteria and the results were compared and analyzed globally and by type of domain. The PriTec tool assesses six domains of technologies: clinical condition, comparative effectiveness and safety, economic impact, implementation consequences, and dissemination speed.

Disruptive technologies (e.g., transcatheter aortic valve implantation or point-of-care tests) had higher weighted global scores than non-disruptive technologies. In the domain analysis, the scores for implementation consequences were higher for disruptive than for non-disruptive technologies. Both types of technologies had similar scores in the other domains.

The PriTec tool seems to be useful for identifying potential disruptive technologies through its implementation domain. Further validation strategies are required to confirm the tool’s applicability and to improve its accuracy in the field of health disruption. The tool could be used by governments, horizon scanning organizations, and HTA organizations to promote the evidence-based detection of disruptive technologies in clinical practice. However, it is advisable that the tool be further tested and validated in other contexts.