ISSUE:

The recent COVID pandemic not only created the necessity, but an opportunity to implement a responsive, innovative “living” approach to health technology assessment (HTA). The need for change is not unique to the pandemic. With the increased pressure to provide patients with early access to new health technologies, the demand for continual data collection from both trials and real-world studies is rising. These pressures opened a discussion on whether HTA bodies need to evolve from the traditional approach of systematic reviews, which become instantaneously outdated, to a “living” approach using technological tools and methods capturing the constant stream of new evidence underpinning a living economic analysis and facilitates data sharing between organisations. So far, HTA bodies have been slow in adopting such innovation.

OVERVIEW:

HTA bodies face significant challenges on how to obtain rapidly generated evidence on promising technologies efficiently and rigorously, paralleled with a demand to consider a wider evidence base, whilst still maintaining the same methodological standards under constrained time and resources. This panel will debate, from a research, industry, and automation perspective (15 min each presentation) if a new paradigm of “Living HTAs” is the only real viable solution to efficiently respond to the rapidly evolving and complex treatment and evidence landscape. How can automated software companies and industry facilitate transparency and acceptance in the use of technology in the “Living HTA” approach as a viable, and only means to efficiently inform decision-making? What are the main methodological and operational challenges if moving towards a “living” standardized approach for all types of assessment? How can we establish a set of standards to minimise analytical time to process data, while optimizing certainty in decision-making? 10min interactive discussion will follow including using real time polling questions. Stakeholders (industry, researchers, payers) will benefit from this panel.