Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program

[4] In this effort, HITAP publishes research and studies in the following areas: methodological development, (HTA and cost) databases and guidelines; knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) and capacity development; technology assessments on drugs, medical devices, medical procedures, disease prevention and health promotion measures; benefit packages of care – mixing screening and treatments; and other public health policies, e.g. evaluation of Thailand’s government compulsory license policy.

Under this strategy, methodological guidelines,[6] a database of HTA studies in Thailand, tools and quality of life measures for cost-utility analysis, and a social value based threshold ceiling were developed.

The review documented the experience of seven health technology assessment organizations in Canada, England and Wales, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Spain, which all use an explicit process of priority setting.

In the latter years, the function of the subcommittee became the maintenance of an optimal list of medicines, wherein the criteria for selection were cost, safety, efficacy and effectiveness of drugs.

Twenty-eight specialist working groups undertake the task of determining what should be on the list as well as informing price negotiations between manufacturers and the NLEM.

In this process, HITAP in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration was involved as the secretariat of the working group whose function was to generate procedures and assure quality of the evidence provided.

In the past HITAP has been instrumental in pushing HTA forward in international policy by becoming part of the delegation representing Thailand as sponsors and writers of several resolutions in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) of the World Health Organization (WHO), including: HITAP has also worked to establish regional collaboration amongst HTA units in Asia.

Along with the National Evidence-based Health Care Collaborating Agency, South Korea (NECA) and the Center for Drug Evaluation, Taiwan (CDE), HITAP founded the HTAsiaLink Network in 2010.