Second Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Conference

HTA is also increasingly, therefore, becoming the focus of the stakeholders involved all stages of the medicines development process.  Patients are proactively engaging with evaluators and payers.  Innovative medicines manufacturers are working to build understanding of the value of their products – not only value to the patients, but also to the healthcare systems and to society as a whole.  Decision-makers in the countries, whether they are governments or payers, are working to understand how to evaluate whether what they are paying for is worth the price-tag that is being asked.  And, increasingly, countries are working together to create a more coordinated HTA assessment model.

The time is more than ripe to start figuring out how all of these different forces are going to work together in practice, and what the resulting outcomes will mean for patients, innovators, governments and payers alike.  Because, while 10 years ago, the EU created a single market in reviewing and approving medicines from a clinical scientific perspective to facilitate uniform access to European patients, increasingly the subsequent scientific evaluation of the value of a product is now fragmented into different methodologies and different approaches post-approval.  This means that, if we are to continue to realise the concept of a single EU and to support equity between patients in Europe, something must be do to have some degree of similarity in the approach.

The question is – how is all this going to be achieved and in what framework?  Where are the multiple cooperative and EU-coordinated projects in HTA going?  And how can we ensure that they do achieve this ultimate aim of getting needed, innovative treatments to the waiting patients?

This workshop will bring together all stakeholders – from regulators to governments, from national competent authorities to the European Medicines Agency in London and from industry, payers and – the ultimate beneficiary of a successfully functioning system – the patients who stand to benefit from the fruits of innovative R&D.  The objective is to move from a “What is happening?” to “How will we make this ‘what’ into a functioning reality that achieves the multiple different objectives from all involved stakeholders?”