Effective Stakeholder Involvement in Rapid Health Technology Assessments: Five Years of Experience in Argentina

OBJECTIVES: Advancing universal healthcare coverage equity is crucial. Health technology assessment (HTA) is a standardized methodology that allows for the assessment of the value of technologies. The transparency and quality of decisions can be enhanced by incorporating the perspectives of stakeholders in a public consultation process.

The objectives of this study were to describe the active stakeholder consultation process for rapid HTAs in an Argentinean-independent academic not-for-profit HTA agency and assess its initial five years of implementation.

METHODS: Since 2017, we have been conducting an active public consultation process for rapid HTA documents, inviting producers, healthcare professionals, and patient organizations to provide comments, and their inputs can lead to changes in HTA documents. Changes were classified as major (changes in coverage recommendations), intermediate (changes in efficacy, net benefit, or cost-effectiveness that did not change coverage recommendations), and minor (other changes). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS: From May 2017 to August 2022, 308 rapid HTA (rHTA) reports were published and 3,438 invitations were sent. 140 rHTA (45.5%) received a total of 228 comments. Comments came from producers (53%, n=112) and healthcare professional organizations (31.2%, n=66). The technologies evaluated were drugs (37%, n=114), procedures (35.5%, n=109), diagnostic methods (15.3%, n=47), and devices (12.2%, n=38). Of the 308 rHTA documents, 120 (39%) underwent modifications, mostly minor adjustments (n=100; 80%), followed by major (n=12; 10%) and intermediate modifications (n=8; 6.4%).

CONCLUSIONS: Implementing an active stakeholder involvement process in HTA is feasible in the LMIC context, and leads to strengthening and improving the HTA process.