The transferability of health technology assessment: the European perspective with focus on central and Eastern European countries

Abstract

Introduction: Lower income European countries have a worse health status and less funds for health care compared to Western Europe. Despite their limited human and financial capacities for conducting Health Technology Assessment (HTA), the need for evidence-based decision-making is growing. Two main approaches emerged as potential solutions: joint clinical assessments on the European level, and simplified procedures relying on the judgements of well-established HTA agencies of Western countries.

Adaptive health technology assessment to facilitate priority setting in low- and middle-income countries

“…Methodologically, aHTA may leverage or adapt available international data, economic evaluations, models and/or decisions from the published literature or established HTA agencies to expedite policy decisions while adequately accounting for concerns of transferability and uncertainty. 9 The aHTA process should be pragmatic, though still informed by key HTA principles such as transparency, independence, consultation and contestability.…”

“…18 19 Notably, these are analyses which have been carried out as one part of the HTA process, though the extent to which they have influenced policy or been implemented may be varied or absent (eg, Romania). 9…”

“…Furthermore, aHTA may not build the needed wideranging capacity-in epidemiological and medical statistics, health economics, HTA processes, evidence appraisal and translation of economic evidence to policy-or create the incentives for building capacity to support HTA institutionalisation. 9 If countries rely solely on aHTA as an approach to priority setting despite its limitations, sustainable HTA infrastructure and processes may never be built and reliance on development partners may continue.…”

Hybrid Closed-Loop Systems for the Treatment of Type 1 Diabetes: A Collaborative, Expert Group Position Statement for Clinical Use in Central and Eastern Europe

“…Outdated and non-evidence-based eligibility criteria for novel therapies can prevent PwD receiving new, efficacious technologies, particularly if funding is instead diverted to medications at high prices with limited health gains [73][74][75][76]. It has been suggested that HTA implementation in the Central and Eastern European region be particularly resource-conscious, with transferability of evidence (e.g., clinical evidence, HTA methodology, and policy) between countries in the region emphasized wherever possible [77]. However, the aspects of HTA that are transferable between countries should be carefully considered, given that each country faces its own unique challenges and comprises different populations.…”

Availability and Accessibility of Orphan Medicinal Products to Patients in Slovakia in the Years 2010–2019

“…Patients' data come from insurance companies. There is no published article with such complex data on access to OMPs for Slovak patients to date; most of the articles refer rather to the process of drug reimbursement (Kawalec et al, 2017;Malinowski et al, 2019;Tesar et al, 2019;Németh et al, 2020) or access to a limited number of OMPs (Blankart et al, 2011;Tesar et al, 2017).…”