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Navigating change: a comparative analysis of health technology assessment reforms across agencies – processes, drivers, and interdependencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gayathri Kumar
Affiliation:
OHE – Office of Health Economics, London, UK
Priscila Radu
Affiliation:
OHE – Office of Health Economics, London, UK
Patricia Cubi-Molla*
Affiliation:
OHE – Office of Health Economics, London, UK
Martina Garau
Affiliation:
OHE – Office of Health Economics, London, UK
Eleanor Bell
Affiliation:
UKHSA, London, UK
Jia Pan
Affiliation:
Adelphi Values, London, UK
Ramiro Gilardino
Affiliation:
MSD, Zurich, Switzerland
Julie Van Bavel
Affiliation:
MSD, Zurich, Switzerland
Agnes Brandtmüller
Affiliation:
MSD, Budapest, Hungary
Katherine Nelson
Affiliation:
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Melinda Goodall
Affiliation:
Goodall HTA Consulting Limited, Manchester UK
*
Corresponding author: Patricia Cubi-Molla; Email: pcubi-molla@ohe.org
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Abstract

Objectives

Health technology assessment (HTA) is a critical part of healthcare decision making in many countries. Changes in Methods and Processes (M&P) of HTA agencies can affect the time and degree of patient access to treatments. Published literature focuses on the different M&P adopted by HTA agencies, rather than on how these have come about over time. Our study investigates key HTA reforms and explores their drivers and interdependencies in a set of HTA agencies in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America.

Methods

We conducted a targeted literature review on M&P guidelines and subsequent changes to those, for 14 HTA agencies. We supplemented and validated initial findings with 29 semi-structured interviews with country-specific experts. We used analytical tools to create process maps, proactivity and influence networks, and clusters of HTA agencies.

Results

We found that processes leading to M&P reforms follow similar steps across HTA agencies. The three most important drivers to reforms were HTA practice and guidelines in other countries; the healthcare policy, legal, and political context within the agency’s country; and experience of challenges in the assessment by the HTA body itself. International collaborations have the potential to accelerate the evolution of HTA systems and the implementation of reforms.

Conclusion

We identified PBAC (Australia), CDA-AMC (Canada), NICE (England), IQWiG (Germany), and ZIN (the Netherlands) as HTA agencies that are catalysts of HTA reforms as well as internationally influential. International collaborations may represent a useful route to accelerate changes as long as they ensure wide stakeholder engagement at an early stage.

Information

Type
Method
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Process to guidelines and methods review in NICE. *Note that NICE process for M&P updates has changed to a modular approach where large reviews will no longer occur. We use this example because of its robustness and its relevance to past reviews, which are the focus of our analysis.

Figure 1

Table 1. List of drivers of changes in HTA M&P, description, and examples

Figure 2

Table 2. Frequency of drivers, as mentioned in the literature and by interviewees, of M&P reform relating to key HTA topics, by country

Figure 3

Figure 2. Network diagram of HTA agency influence. The direction of influence is represented by the direction of the arrowhead. For example, an arrow pointing from HAS to PBAC would mean that HAS mentions PBAC in its guidelines. A double-headed arrow indicates that both HTA agencies mention each other in their guidelines (e.g., CDA-AMC and PBAC). The number in brackets represents the number of times an agency is mentioned by other agencies included in the study, and the size of the nodes is proportional to that. Agencies that have no number in brackets are not mentioned by another agency (e.g., INFARMED). Likewise, agencies that neither mention nor are mentioned by another agency have no links (e.g., AIFA).

Figure 4

Figure 3. Heatmap of changes to HTA methods or processes. The heatmap depicts the relative ordering of M&P guidelines updates relating to each topic for the HTA agencies in scope. Gray cells indicate that there has been no change in the HTA agency’s stance on the topic since 2010. Non-shaded cells denote that the HTA agency does not explicitly refer to the topic in their guidelines. Health technology assessment; NL: The Netherlands.

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