Budgeting for a billion: applying health technology assessment (HTA) for universal health coverage in India
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Author(s)
Dabak, Saudamini Vishwanath
Pilasant, Songyot
Mehndiratta, Abha
Downey, Laura Emily
Cluzeau, Francoise
Chalkidou, Kalipso
Luz, Alia Cynthia Gonzales
Youngkong, Sitaporn
Teerawattananon, Yot
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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BACKGROUND: India recently launched the largest universal health coverage scheme in the world to address the gaps in providing healthcare to its population. Health technology assessment (HTA) has been recognised as a tool for setting priorities as the government seeks to increase public health expenditure. This study aims to understand the current situation for healthcare decision-making in India and deliberate on the opportunities for introducing HTA in the country. METHODS: A paper-based questionnaire, adapted from a survey developed by the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), was administered on the second ...
View more >BACKGROUND: India recently launched the largest universal health coverage scheme in the world to address the gaps in providing healthcare to its population. Health technology assessment (HTA) has been recognised as a tool for setting priorities as the government seeks to increase public health expenditure. This study aims to understand the current situation for healthcare decision-making in India and deliberate on the opportunities for introducing HTA in the country. METHODS: A paper-based questionnaire, adapted from a survey developed by the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), was administered on the second day of the Topic Selection Workshop that was conducted as part of the HTA Awareness Raising Workshop held in New Delhi on 25-27 July, 2016. Participants were invited to respond to questions covering the need, demand and supply for HTA in their context as well as the role of their organisation vis-à-vis HTA. The response rate for the survey was about 68% with 41 participants having completed the survey. RESULTS: Three quarters of the respondents (71%) stated that the government allocated healthcare resources on the basis of expert opinion. Most respondents indicated reimbursement of individual health technologies and designing a basic health benefit package (93% each) were important health policy areas while medical devices and screening programmes were cited as important technologies (98% and 92%, respectively). More than half of the respondents noted that relevant local data was either not available or was limited. Finally, technical capacity was seen as a strength and a constraint facing organisations. CONCLUSION: The findings from this study shed light on the current situation, the opportunities, including potential topics, and challenges in conducting HTA in India. There are limitations to the study and further studies may need to be conducted to inform the role that HTA will play in the design or implementation of universal health coverage in India.
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View more >BACKGROUND: India recently launched the largest universal health coverage scheme in the world to address the gaps in providing healthcare to its population. Health technology assessment (HTA) has been recognised as a tool for setting priorities as the government seeks to increase public health expenditure. This study aims to understand the current situation for healthcare decision-making in India and deliberate on the opportunities for introducing HTA in the country. METHODS: A paper-based questionnaire, adapted from a survey developed by the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), was administered on the second day of the Topic Selection Workshop that was conducted as part of the HTA Awareness Raising Workshop held in New Delhi on 25-27 July, 2016. Participants were invited to respond to questions covering the need, demand and supply for HTA in their context as well as the role of their organisation vis-à-vis HTA. The response rate for the survey was about 68% with 41 participants having completed the survey. RESULTS: Three quarters of the respondents (71%) stated that the government allocated healthcare resources on the basis of expert opinion. Most respondents indicated reimbursement of individual health technologies and designing a basic health benefit package (93% each) were important health policy areas while medical devices and screening programmes were cited as important technologies (98% and 92%, respectively). More than half of the respondents noted that relevant local data was either not available or was limited. Finally, technical capacity was seen as a strength and a constraint facing organisations. CONCLUSION: The findings from this study shed light on the current situation, the opportunities, including potential topics, and challenges in conducting HTA in India. There are limitations to the study and further studies may need to be conducted to inform the role that HTA will play in the design or implementation of universal health coverage in India.
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Journal Title
Health Research Policy and Systems
Volume
16
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Subject
Health services and systems
Public health
Policy and administration
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Health Policy & Services
Health Care Sciences & Services
Health technology assessment in India