“Support for a more centralized European approach to evaluating new health technologies is gaining pace among the national and regional officials who perform this work in the member countries” – declared an opening line of a Health POLITICO-Pro article reporting from the EUnetHTA JA3 kick-off meeting the day after.
The EUnetHTA JA3 is poised to start its activities in the coming few months. The general objective of this joint action is “to increase the use, quality and efficiency of joint HTA work at European level.” During the meeting the participants discussed ways of closer collaboration on HTA production that will meet the needs of the national healthcare systems. Joint assessment pilots performed in EUnetHTA Joint Action 2 demonstrated the ability of the diverse HTA agencies to work together and bring value at the national level for several participating Member States. The challenge now is to scale the production while ensuring a wider application of the results of the joint work among the EU Members States. More operational work needs to be done in finding effective ways of bringing the practice of the European cooperation into the “real life” routine HTA production processes of the EUnetHTA participating organisations.
The successful EUnetHTA development since its inception in 2005 has been coordinated by the EUnetHTA Secretariat at the Danish Health Authority. EUnetHTA JA3 will be coordinated by Zorginstituut Nederland (ZIN) – we wish the new coordinating team best of success in their endeavours!
