ISSUE: Subsidized health care funding decisions in Asia-Pacific (AP) do not systematically consider the patient perspective. Decision makers may not be able to truly appreciate the real burden of an illness to patients. As a result, new technologies addressing this need may be undervalued. Therefore, capturing the impact of novel medications on patients’ lives and empowering patients to articulate the value of these innovations should lead to improved access, especially for innovative specialty products in areas such as oncology. While many AP health care systems with existing or emerging health technology assessment (HTA) are interested in principle to include the patients’ voice in funding decisions, in practice they often do not know how to implement this. OVERVIEW: The guiding question of the issue panel is: How can we inform health care decision making, at HTA/payer level, by empowering the patient perspective on the value of medicines? The panel brings together experts from different AP countries, representing patient groups, policy makers and academia. The panelists will contribute their views and first-hand experience in Korea, Taiwan and Australia, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of incorporating and empowering patient perspectives into funding decisions. The three countries are arguably among the more mature subsidized health care systems in AP, yet each approaches this topic differently and with varying degrees of rigor, making them interesting case studies for other countries in the region. To further inform the discussion the results of a survey conducted with cancer patient groups & oncologists from throughout Asia-Pacific will be shared to understand unmet needs, challenges and potential in patient advocacy.