Health Technology Assessment for Policy Making in India: Current Scenario and Way Forward

Excerpt

The Indian government has made a commitment to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) [1, 2], as a means to reduce catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditure and ensure affordable access to essential health care for the entire population. As part of the plan to deliver UHC, the government has identified ensuring value for money in the health budget to be a key priority [1, 2]. The central government has outlined a plan to devolve a greater share of the overall tax base to states, who in turn will become more important players in financing health care programmes [6, 7]. This implies that states will be making resource allocation decisions on what to provide, to whom, and how much. Simultaneously, the central government is increasingly adopting the role of strategic purchaser of health care [3‐5]. …