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  • Supporting implementation of HTA in low-and middle-income countries

Article

Supporting implementation of HTA in low-and middle-income countries

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The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) is partnering with low-and middle-income countries to support local implementation of health technology assessments (HTA).

Hospital in Malawi
Hospital in Malawi. Photo: Norwegian Institute of Public Health

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) is partnering with low-and middle-income countries to support local implementation of health technology assessments (HTA).

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All countries face difficult choices deciding which new medical technologies, medicines, preventive measures and practices to introduce into the health system. Based within the Division for Health Services of NIPH, our field of expertise is supporting policy makers in low- and middle-income countries to make better informed decisions, realise Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and Sustainable Development Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages.

With a focus on evidence synthesis and economic evaluations, our team is specialised in providing evidence for decision support, striving to assist the strengthening of evidence-based, sustainable and equitable choices in healthcare. Our team provides support for building models for scientific and technical cooperation on Health Technology Assessment (HTA). HTA is the primary decision support aid NIPH uses as it enables the most systematic, transparent and evidence-based approach towards comparing alternative interventions based up on pre-defined criteria of interest to decision-makers.

Priority settings even more important in post-COVID era

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries will face serious economic crises and shrinking public spending. One area that may be hit hardest is the health sector, where two decades of hard-fought gains in health access and outcomes may be at risk owing to declining public financing and uncertainty in donor programming. If countries are unable to spend more, they need to spend better. In a blog post, which is part of a series of policy recommendations from Center for Global Development to support a more effective Eurafrica relationship, we contribute to a discussion on why priority setting in health is more critical now than ever before; where global priority setting expertise lies and may be drawn upon to accelerate the use of priority setting in SSA; and how Afro-European partnerships could help countries in SSA to accelerate the use of priority setting in the post-COVID era. 

Our approach

Our efforts are focused on locally identified and driven activities related to HTA processes, the development of relevant tools and products for producing and using HTA.

Steps of the HTA process

HTAprocess.png

We offer support to partner countries across all steps of the HTA process, as illustrated in the figure.

Aspects of implementation in partnerships with low-and middle-income countries (LMIC)

We share our expertise and support LMICs in conducting and adapting HTA to national contexts and establishing local working processes. In addition, we contribute to templates and tools to serve LMIC and global actors.

Our four phases of work include:

  • country engagement and skills assessments,
  • tailored capacity building, including to develop communities of practice and regional collaborations,
  • technical collaborations,
  • development and publication of open source tools and resource,
  • sustainability, institutionalisation and evaluation

Contact point: Lumbwe Chola

Partners 

Countries 

  • Ghana - the Ghana Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, Ghana National Health Insurance Agency and the University of Ghana 
  • Myanmar - the Ministry of Health and Sport, the WHO Myanmar country office, and Thailand's Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP) 
  • Moldova - the Moldovan National Public Health Agency, and the World Bank 
  • Palestine - the National Institute of Public Health, World Health Organization country office in the occupied Palestinian territory 

 Our networks 

The bymonthly newsletter from HTAi covers our collaboration with Moldova in the 2nd edition (pages 4 and 6, https://htai.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Nov-2020-Newsletter.pdf), and our collaboration with Palestine in the 4th edition (pages 2 and 4, https://htai.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/January-2021-1.pdf).

Resources 

All products that we produce are freely available as global public goods for the pursuit of Universal Health Coverage and will be available here when published. 

Reports and protocols

Our team

Funding

This work is partially financed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, grant number QZA-18/0102.

History

02.11.21: Added new report on topic identification, selection and prioritisation for HTA.

14.04.21: Added new resources and reports.

02.02.21: Added resource on Economic Evaluation and link to information on our collaboration with Moldova and Palestine.

15.01.21: Added protocol to the project Mapping of Methods used for the Adoption and Adaptation of Health Technology Assessments (HTA): A scoping review.

03.12.20: Updated on priority settings in the post-COVID era with link to new blog post.