The Future of Health Technology Assessment in Healthcare Decision Making in Asia

In a recent meeting,[3] nearly every country in Asia claimed that it has its own version of HTA in decision making, and that the HTA entity in their country is linked to government decision making inNMTreimbursement or in the drug formulary. However, what is missing commonly in those Asian countries’ HTA frameworks is the use of economic evaluation (pharmacoeconomic in the case of drugs). In other words, those Asian countries with HTA frameworks make decisions on the adoption and use of NMTs without specific consideration of cost effectiveness. In the case of drugs, therefore, most countries in Asia concede that the use of pharmacoeconomicbased HTA is the focus of their policy changes in the years coming.

Although submission of pharmacoeconomic results for new drug reimbursement decisions is still not compulsory in Taiwan, it is interesting to observe that pharmacoeconomic results accompany most of the applications, likely with the expectation that decisions will be more favorable towards the product if pharmacoeconomic results are included. The only difference among applications is the level of pharmacoeconomic evidence included.[17]