Page 29 - Htain Manual

resource allocation in numerous countries in Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, and Australia.

Nascent institutions are also being established in South East Asia, the West Pacific, South

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America and Africa. These countries utilize HTA for the purpose of informing content of
health benefits packages, such as the universal health coverage program of Thailand, or the
National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and the essential medicines lists (NLEM) in low and

middle income countries, such as Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mozambique.

To facilitate the process of transparent and evidence informed decision making in the

field of health, Government of India has also established an institutional framework for Health
Technology Assessment in India (HTAIn) in the form of a semi-autonomous Board within the

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Department of Health Research. HTAIn will generate and compile evidences related to cost-
effectiveness, clinical- effectiveness and safety of medicines, devices, vaccines and health
programmes by means of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) studies. It will evaluate

appropriateness and cost effectiveness of the available and new health technologies in India.

Establishment of HTAIn is an essential step towards achievement of UHC, one of the targets

under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Challenges and Opportunities

HTA in India brings with it several challenges that need to be recognized and

addressed. The first and foremost challenge pertains to the gross deficiency in the human

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resource and institutional capacity to undertake HTA studies in India. Second challenge is
ensuring technical rigour and methodological and process consistency across all the agencies
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doing HTA studies, making the results authentic and comparable. The third challenge relates
to data availability and quality as the effective conduct of HTA depends on the availability of

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reliable data. Transparency of the process and the way of addressing conflict of interests of
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those performing the HTA studies poses another challenge.

In order to accelerate progress towards UHC, health systems and programmes must

be designed to yield value for money. Using evidence-based and transparent HTA processes,

these decisions can be made in a manner that ensures efficient and equitable health care
provision. Establishing capacity for HTA also makes it possible for more explicit priority setting

that ensures that available health budgets are spent after weighing all options, and coming

to a fair and just conclusion.

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