Assessing health technology in the EU: Commission proposes to reinforce cooperation amongst Member States
After more than one decade of EU cooperation between Health Technology Assessment (HTA) organisations across the EU, the European Commission adopted a proposal to strengthen this cooperation and ensure its sustainability. Clemens Auer, Director General of the Austrian Ministry of Health, recalls the beginning of the EU cooperation on HTA with a view towards the future.
What do you think about the EU cooperation on HTA?
I would like to start by saying that Austria is among the founding partners of the EUnetHTA joint action. This shows that, like other Member States, we recognised early on the value of HTA as an instrument for optimal decision making. Since the early 2000, HTA has been used regularly for investment and reimbursement decisions by several players, such as the Ministry of Health and the Social Insurance.
But EUnetHTA is also about creating a community built on trust, which allows for sharing best practices amongst HTA bodies. It is about learning from each other's experiences and ultimately for developing the basis of what can be a European model of carrying out HTA – a model to provide high-quality, timely, transparent, and transferable information to HTA bodies across the EU. Moreover, EUnetHTA created a foundation for setting up the HTA Network in 2013, which resulted in greater cooperation on HTA at a higher, strategic level. I believe that this EU cooperation on HTA, which for many people is synonym with EUnetHTA, is recognised as a frontrunner for global cooperation on HTA.
How do you see the future of EU cooperation on HTA in the wider context of the discussion on access to medicines?
In the last years, the challenge posed to national healthcare budgets by the high prices of medicines triggered a lot of political discussions. I am convinced that Europe is about equity of access and innovation, and I think it is in the common interest of all citizens that Member States rely more on each other, share information and have more tools at their disposal to help them take informed decisions when assessing the added value of innovative medicines. It is all about assessing the benefit of innovation and weighing it against costs.
The recently established regional cooperations like BeNeLuxA and La Valletta are trying to pilot some common approaches to joint pricing negotiation. It is not easy and the diversities of national legal frameworks make these efforts challenging. In this context I believe a structured permanent and sustainable cooperation on Health Technology Assessment can provide one important contribution among others to the overall issue of access to medicine.
Both the Council and the European Parliament recognised the importance of this topic for national healthcare systems and ultimately for all EU citizens and have been seeking solutions. The Council recognised that EU cooperation on HTA can support the decision-making of Member States and asked the Commission to reflect about the future of this cooperation beyond 2020 when the current EUnetHTA Joint Action comes to an end. The European Parliament in its Report on EU options for improving access to medicines highlighted the potential of joint assessments for avoiding the duplication of efforts and the misallocation of resources across the EU and urged the Commission to propose legislation on a European system for HTA. The Commission did its homework and on the 31st of January adopted a proposal for cooperation on HTA. Now it is on us, Member States and the European Parliament, to carefully study the proposal and to engage constructively in a discussion to decide about the future of the HTA cooperation in Europe.
The seeds of the EU cooperation on HTA were sown more than a decade ago, now is the time to harvest its fruits. Austria will engage very actively in this discussion, not only now, but also in the second part of the year when it holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Activities at EU level
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European Commission – Health and Food Safety |
News
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