Mission Report: SOUTH-SOUTH COLLABORATION: EXPERIENCE SHARING ON HTA DEVELOPMENT

From November 15-17, 2016, HITAP attended the South-South collaboration workshop in Irene, Pretoria, South Africa. Through the support of the international Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), representatives from countries all over Africa and Asia (namely Cambodia, China, India, South Africa, Thailand, and the UK) came to share lessons learned in HTA development in their countries.
They explored the following main topics: the overview of the HTA journey of a country; how HTA has influenced health policy decisions, health benefits package design, and quality improvement; what have been the major challenges and obstacles; how were these challenges overcome, in countries where HTA is more developed; what is the role or potential role of HTA in the country; what are support/mechanisms/knowledge that would be useful for the use of HTA in improving health policy, budget allocation, or HBP design; and, how countries may begin their HTA journeys with the lessons learned from others. The group also discussed the conducive factors to setting up an HTA agency and the process, opportunities, and challenges of the creation of a national or regional hub.
This meeting was intended to share the experiences of different countries and in what ways the iDSI can fill the gaps and needs regarding HTA development for evidence-informed priority-setting for healthcare. HITAP also came to support the creation of a South African national and regional hub to service sub-Saharan Africa. The group concluded on the usefulness of the workshop, with plans to convene annually or biennially. IC and PRICELESS will also be sharing the report detailing the outcomes and discussion points during the event.