Report: Indonesian Delegation Study Visit to HITAP

The Indonesian government is strongly committed to Universal Health Coverage and acknowledges that health technology assessment (HTA) as an important tool for setting priorities for the health benefits package. Since the establishment of the HTA Committee, a number of Ministry of Health (MOH) and academic staff in Indonesia were trained and 3 HTA studies have been completed.

The presence of high level policy makers such as Dr. Untung Suseno Suharto, the Secretary General, in the Prince Mahidol Award Conference 2016 from the MOH affirms the commitment to HTA
development. The conference highlights that the main challenge of UHC is to allocate scarce resources; as such, HTA is extremely relevant to the many low- and middle-income countries such as Indonesia.

International development partners including the World Health Organization, US Agency for International Development, and the International Decision Support Initiative (IDSI) led by NICE International and HITAP are fostering and building a strong collaboration with each other and the MOH to ensure long-term sustainable capacity development for HTA, which includes technical, policy and institutional capacity. It is important that HTA is effectively linked to policy, especially on the development of the national formulary and the UHC benefits package.

While NICE and HITAP, which are permanent HTA agencies in the UK and Thailand, are sharing their experiences to Indonesian partners, Indonesia must develop their HTA system in order to suit the local context, political economy, and government arrangement.