International health technology assessment collaboration welcomes two new members

As announced by NICE, New Zealand’s Pharmac and Quebec’s INESS have joined six other health technology assessment bodies from across the UK, Australia and Canada.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recently announced that the health technology assessment (HTA) bodies of New Zealand and Quebec, Pharmac and Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS), respectively, have joined a international HTA collaboration. The AUS-CAN-NZ-UK collaboration, which was initiated in 2021, now comprises eight partner organizations worldwide. The collaboration partners plan to focus into 2024 on work sharing, horizon scanning, and science and methods development, plus continuing to engage with regulators, with an information sharing webinar to be held in Autumn 2023.

“Building beneficial partnerships with international health technology assessment bodies supports our ambition to continually learn from data and implementation by using shared opportunities and challenges to develop new approaches to HTA,” declared NICE. “We collaborate on a range of topics that will benefit people accessing healthcare around the world and allows us to remain at the forefront of HTA globally.”

The addition of INESS of Quebec and Pharmac of New Zealand to the collaboration will see more than 134 million people benefit from the group’s work. The AUS-CAN-NZ-UK HTA collaboration now includes:

• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
• Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH)
• Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
• Healthcare Improvement Scotland (Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) and Scottish Health Technologies Group (SHTG))
• Health Technology Wales (HTW)
• All Wales Therapeutics & Toxicology Centre (AWTTC)
• Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS)
• Pharmac, New Zealand

NICE reports the collaboration is prioritising three areas for 2023/2024, which include:

1. Work sharing — The partners will explore the feasibility of work sharing to support HTA decision making for pharmaceuticals and other health technologies and to improve their agency’s capacity. Activities of the group will include:

• Identification of methodological and procedural areas where further HTA alignment is needed to support future work sharing
• Engagement with national and global stakeholders about the opportunities for work sharing
• Initial process development and pilot identification
• For non-pharmaceutical technologies, a process to share information about planned and in progress assessments

2. Horizon scanning — Partners understand the importance for our HTA and healthcare systems to be able to identify and prepare for the opportunities and challenges of the future. The group will work together to support better system preparedness. This work will also pave the way for new joint projects on common priorities. Activities of the group will include:

• For non-pharmaceutical technologies, developing procedures to support agencies to exchange intelligence about technologies that could address health system priorities
• Taking into account existing, planned and future agency activity in horizon scanning, exploration of how we could work together as a group to use these resources efficiently

3. Science and methods development — Partners collaborate flexibly in science and methods including other HTA agencies outside of the group. Collaborative work enables our agencies to make best use of the skills and expertise contained within our agencies and where appropriate promote an aligned HTA position. Partners work to support awareness across the group of the science and methods projects our agencies are undertaking and to embed collaboration into those projects. The group can also initiate joint projects arising from work sharing and forward scanning activities. Activities will include:

• Regular exchange about the science and method projects our agencies are undertaking
• Ongoing joint project work:
  • Methodological guidance and a new joint scientific advice procedure on the use of surrogate outcomes when analysing cost-effectiveness
  • Use of whole disease modelling in HTA
• Cooperative work developing a digital evaluation framework
• NICE-CADTH scientific advice

In addition to these three areas of priority, partners will continue to engage with regulators, especially where those regulators are collaborating and work sharing themselves, for example through Orbis and the Access Consortium.

The collaboration partners plan to hold an information sharing webinar later in autumn 2023 that will soon be advertised on NICE social media and NICE news international.

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