• Last updated：2024-08-27
• Count Views：20

        For the sake of enhancing fairness and efficiency in the allocation of healthcare resources, HTA is gaining prominence in the respective countries. The HTA research approach is applied to the overall collection of systematic review evidence of  innovative health technologies and health and welfare policies, cost-effectiveness and population health data, in order to help decision-makers keep track of decision-making issues, clarify and explore the challenges encountered and available health policy options, and serve as the empirical scientific bases for governmental decision-making. This is another application of HTA.  
        In the application of HTA to the evaluation of public policies, in order to combine multi-disciplinary expertise, besides clinical effectiveness, safety and benefits, cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit, economic analysis, social environment, ethics and morals, patient and social involvement and legal considerations are included. Public policy issues are evaluated systematically, transparently and impartially. Despite the different goals of respective policies, the scientific HTA approach and evidence-based research help with the scheduling of public health interventions, optimization of the organizational structure, selection of a suitable framework for the healthcare system and the economic benefits of policies. In other words, HTA serves as an important bridge between scientific evidence and policy decisions.
        Nevertheless, evaluating respective public health interventions and policies applying the HTA approach will be met with the complex, extensive and diversified policy assessment decision-making process; it is much more challenging than the assessment of NHI coverage cases. HTA can help with health and welfare policies being planned. International status and research accomplishments are understood through systematic review and local data are utilized to evaluate possible impacts. While policies are being discussed, the multi-principle decision-making and analysis approach may be applied to the analysis of the weighted impacts of respective principles in order to find the optimal solution or to reach a consensus. After a policy is enforced, systematic data collection may be applied to periodically evaluate the effects of policies and to accordingly revise corrective actions; this will become a policy-making process based on integrated empirical data. Consisting of policy formation, implementation of intervening measures, efficacy assessment, and policy revision, among others, HTA is a cycle for defining a series of policies and offers powerful empirical evidence as the support to help the government reinforce its total management of policies throughout their life cycle.
        CDE started to perform policy assessment for the “Health Technology Assessment Research Commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Welfare” as authorized by the MoHW in 2015 and has been performing related policy assessments on a yearly basis ever since. In addition, CDE collaborates with the National Health Research Institutes on emerging precision medicine and performs related cost-effectiveness assessments of new health technologies.  
        In the selection of the research topic of a policy assessment program, in order to boost the suitability of a research topic, for the 2018 Research Program, CDE formed the expert committee on topic selection that discusses and screens research topics introduced by respective departments and agencies under the MoHW and scores and rates policies according to their importance, urgency and feasibility after comprehensive considerations before deciding annual research topics to hopefully prioritize more effective or feasible research projects among limited resources. In the implementation of research projects, besides through its internal research teams, CDE has collaborated with the National Health Research Institutes, the Taipei Medical University, and the Kaohsiung Medical University, among other domestic academic units in order to boost educational institutions’ experience in policy assessment and to develop related talent.
        In addition, CDE invites representative experts in the specific field to serve as consultants based on respective research topics; they help define the research direction and methodology and provide guidance throughout the research process applying their expertise in order to reinforce the professional essence of the research project and to jointly discuss policy suggestions so that more constructive policies may be recommended.