The EUnetHTA Steering Committee comprised of the Associated Partners in the project met in Copenhagen on May 11, 2006. Representatives from 32 out of 35 organisations – Associated Partners that include national and regional HTA agencies, Ministries of Health, research institutions and international organisations (Cochrane Collaboration) discussed and endorsed 3-year work plan, standard operations procedures, structure and communication and publication rules for the project.
Work package leaders presented planned activities within their respective packages and reported on the progress achieved up-to-date. A few examples:
- Drug eluting stents for the treatment of ischemic heart disease has been identified by the Core HTA work package as the first topic for the Core HTA structure and framework development (Work Package 4).
- First steps in the establishment of the stakeholder forum have been taken – EUnetHTA will be holding a European HTA Parallel Forum on October 4 and 5, 2006 as part of the European Health Forum Gastein in Austria. Speakers from The European Commission’s DG Sanco and DG Enterprise, Ministries of Health, NICE (UK), HAS (France), Public Health institutions, and industry associations, will present and discuss European stakeholders’ perspectives on the HTA process, their involvement in and their experiences with HTA.
- The structure for the Europe HTA policy study in Work Package 6 (transferring HTA to policy) has been agreed upon and the work on data collection starts in June 2006. The final outcome of the study will be a joint publication between EUnetHTA and the WHO European Observatory on Health Care Systems.
- First draft of the Information Platform for EUnetHTA was also presented. The launch of the official EUnetHTA website is scheduled for June 29, 2006.
EUnetHTA will also hold a “Work-in-progress” session during the annual conference of the Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) in Adelaide, Australia, on July 3, 2006.
