Organizational structure and funding of health technology assessment agencies around the world

Abstract

Aim : analyze the structure and funding of health technology assessment (HTA) agencies abroad. Materials and methods . Here, we review the organizational structure and funding of HTA agencies in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden), Canada and Australia. The relevant information was found on web-sites of HTA agencies, in the Medline database, and via the searching engines Yandex and Google; the search was conducted using the specific descriptors: «organizational structure of HTA agency», «funding of HTA agency», «pharmaceutical», «reimbursement», «healthcare decision-making», and «funding». Results. The identified HTA-agencies may have a status of either government-funded or nonprofit organization or a structural element of a governmental body. These hTa agencies are funded mainly from the national budget. The funding varies from €550 000 for Ireland to £63.1 mln (€70 million) for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK. The number of employees in the reviewed HTA agencies varies from 6.8 full time employees (FTE) in the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) in Ireland to 604 FTEs in the NICE.