The second Taiwan-U.K. health technology assessment workshop was held June 24-25 in Taipei City, underscoring the two sides’ commitment to jointly advancing medicine.
The National Health Insurance Administration, which is overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and its Center for Health Policy and Technology Assessment organized the event in cooperation with the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the NHIA said.
According to the administration, the June 24 sessions focused on funding methods for new cancer drugs as well as digital health development at NICE, and were open to academics, pharmaceutical industry professionals, patients groups and the interested public. In contrast, June 25 will see closed-door talks on real-world data collection mechanisms for new medicines and the evaluation of their clinical efficacy between experts from NICE, NHIA and CHPTA staff members, and domestic specialists in gene and cellular therapies.
Speaking at the first day of the workshop, NHIA Director General Shih Chung-liang said with the rapid progress in emerging technologies, expensive new drugs have entered the market. He added that their clinical effectiveness is not yet certain, so it falls to the NHIA to appraise these new products and decide whether to incorporate them into national health insurance benefits.
Based on a cooperative agreement that NHIA and NICE signed in May 2023, the bodies will continue to conduct information exchange, build a mutual training channel and contribute to the field of health technology assessment to benefit the global community, the NHIA concluded. (POC-E)
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