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HTA – Public consultation on strengthening EU cooperation on Health Technology Assessment

What it is

The European Commission launched a public stakeholder consultation on the future initiative on EU cooperation on HTA aiming to explorehow a cooperation at EU level can be carried out in a sustainable way as well as support EU Member States in their HTA activities.

The ongoing EU cooperation on HTA is implemented through the EU co-funded Joint Action EUnetHTA, which is unlikely to be funded and continued after 2020. To facilitate the way forward, the European Commission has launched the above mentioned initiative that envisages five possible scenarios:

  1. The status quo;
  2. Long-term voluntary cooperation;
  3. Cooperation on collection, sharing and use of common tools and data;
  4. Cooperation on production of joint REA reports;
  5. Cooperation on production of joint full HTA reports.

Why it is important

The patient community, being one of the key stakeholder groups,is invited to express their views on the European HTA cooperation, based on their experience in the current system and ongoing cooperation mechanisms, their needs in the future and their opinion on the proposed approach in the Inception Impact Assessment.

As EPF we will respond to this consultation and count on the collaboration of all our membership to submit a response that represents the views and expectations of all patients in Europe. 

In case you wish to submit also a separate response, we advise you to share with EPF your views. Considering the importance of this consultation, it is key to ensure alignment of the patient community perspective on HTA. 

Where to find it

  • The strategy for the public consultation is available here.
  • The public consultation for organisations is available here.
  • A questionnaire for citizens is also available. Find it here.

How to participate

You are invited to share with us your comments on some or all of the questions presented in the questionnaire.  Examples of good or bad experiences and availability of data and evidence will be useful to support our joint EPF response. Please send your input to valentina.strammiello@eu-patient.eu .

By when

EPF will hold a one-round consultation but some other actions will be taken to allow an informed contribution to the consultation.

We will hold our conference call with the Informal Working Group on HTA and on 16 December a webinar to provide you with more information and respond to your questions.

We have circulated a draft response on the 22 December. We will integrate comments received by 4 January 2017 and finalise EPF response for submission by 10 January 2017.  

Background information about HTA

  • EU total healthcare expenditure amounts to around 1300 billion EUR per year. This amount is estimated to further increase in the coming years. Health Technology Assessment is key to Member States to ensure accessibility, quality and safety of healthcare. HTA assesses the added value of a given health technology (including diagnostic tests and treatment methods, medical equipment and devices, pharmaceuticals, rehabilitation methods, prevention programmes, procedures) over and above existing ones[1]. This results also in which health technologies patients can access and on their overall quality of life. For this reason we call for patients to contribute to HTA processes and have access to user-friendly information.

HTAs can be run in two main different ways:

  1. Through Rapid REA (Relative Effectiveness Assessment)
  2. Through Full HTA

Supporting tools to learn more about HTA

The consultation webpage provides some basic info about HTA. If you wish to have more insight, we advise to access the EUPATI toolbox on HTA . If you want to know more about EPF work on HTA, you can find information on the EPF webpage on HTA.