Mission Report: Driving Evidence-Informed Healthcare Decision-Making: Introducing the HTA Framework and Sensitising Stakeholders on HTA in Bhutan

Executive summary

The Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Division (HITAD) under the Ministry of Health, Bhutan, has been leading the efforts to institutionalise Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in Bhutan. Towards this goal, HITAD and the Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Ministry of Public Health, Thailand, with support from the Access and Delivery Partnership (ADP), have been working towards developing the national HTA framework for Bhutan. To ensure the framework is fit-for-purpose to the Bhutanese context and to increase ownership, a five-day stakeholder consultation workshop was held between 29 May to 2 June 2023, to solicit inputs and revise the framework.

Following a series of deliberations, the framework was revised and presented to all participating stakeholders on the final day of the workshop. This was then presented to the High-Level Committee for Health Sector (HLC-HC) on the 5th of June 2023. Further revisions were made to the framework based on suggestions from the HLC-HC before being officially endorsed on 29 June 2023.

This report provides a summary of the key activities, discussions, and outcomes of the stakeholder consultation. It serves as evidence for Bhutan’s continued commitment to institutionalising HTA as one of the priority setting tools in the health sector. With the convergence of strong political commitment, partnerships, and stakeholder driven policies, Bhutan is now working towards implementing the framework. However, several bottlenecks have been identified which may hinder realisation of this objective including the lack of technical capacity in the country to produce and use evidence from HTA. HITAD, HITAP, and ADP are devising strategies to address such issues and welcome support and collaboration from the international HTA community including research and developmental partners.