OBJECTIVES: The Swiss Health Technology Assessment (HTA) program is an innovative program that connects research with policy making. In 2017, a HTA unit was established within the Federal Office of Public Health following a decision by the Federal Council in 2015 to intensify efforts in HTA.

METHODS: The legal basis of the HTA program is Article 32 of the Federal Health Insurance Act, which specifies that health technologies (i.e., all preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions in health care) covered by the compulsory health insurance must be effective (E), appropriate (A), and economically efficient (E), alias the EAE criteria. New health technologies that do not meet the EAE criteria are not eligible for coverage. For health technologies that are already reimbursed, re-evaluation of the criteria can result in reimbursement arrest. The HTA program was developed to facilitate the evaluation of the EAE criteria in a systematic, reproducible and transparent manner.

RESULTS: Discrepancies were found between the information reported in the HTA reports and the information requested by the policy makers. For example, 1) the policy makers often requested Swiss clinical expert opinions, despite the presence of higher-level quality evidence, 2) cost-effectiveness findings were requested by some, but not all policy makers and 3) the length and the language used in the HTA reports was typically considered too long and too scientific.

• engaging Swiss clinical experts early in the HTA process
• organizing round table discussions between assessment team, experts and/or policy makers
• developing survey questionnaires to collect direct Swiss patient data and
• introducing lay language summaries.

CONCLUSIONS: The Swiss HTA program is an innovative program that is still exploring and testing alternative steps to minimize the gap between HTA and healthcare decision making.