OBJECTIVES

: In January 2018, proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on health technology assessment and amending Directive 2011/24/EU was adopted. The proposed regulation aims to strengthen EU cooperation in terms of joint HTA (health technology assessment). The objective of this analysis was to assess how often EUnetHTA REAs (Rapid Relative Effectiveness Assessments) were implemented on the national level.

METHODS

: EUnetHTA National Uptake and Case Studies subpage was searched and the use of the EUnetHTA JA3 (2016-2020) and JA2 Archive (2012-2015) assessments were analysed. Based on the EUnetHTA information about details of REAs use, implementations were categorized in 10 groups.

RESULTS

: A total of 120 implementations in 24 countries were identified. The implementation ratio for drug to non-drug technologies was 47% to 53% (50% to 50% in JA3 and 46% to 54% in JA2). Within drug technologies, 2 technologies with 15 implementations in JA3 and 7 technologies with 41 implementations in JA2 were made. The most implementations were found for canaglifozin (12 countries) and ramucirumab (10 countries). Among the countries that most often used EUnetHTA REAs, Austria (22), Croatia (19) and Spain (17) dominated. Summary (27 cases) and adaptation (26 cases) were the most often used types of EUnetHTA assessments. Implementation of REA in direct decision-making was identified for 6 countries, among which Austria had the most cases (8). Croatia is the country with implementations for almost all analysed technologies, however summary of the report was the most common type of implementation there.

CONCLUSIONS

: The analysis shows that there were few REA’s implementations in limited number of countries. This conclusion is confirmed by proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council, which presented EUnetHTA concept as unsufficient in terms of eliminating duplication of work and the fragmentation of the internal markets.