OBJECTIVES: In January 2025, joint European health technology assessment (HTA) will commence for oncology and advanced therapy medicinal products. However, there is still uncertainty regarding the specific EU HTA procedure and the extent to which JCA will be adopted by individual countries. Therefore, we aimed to create a score to 1) predict the influence that individual countries will have on JCA production and 2) estimate the expected uptake of JCA by HTA bodies at country level.

METHODS: For the development of the influence score, we defined four categories, each with ascending levels indicating increasing influence on EU HTA. Category one represents the level of HTA experience, based on both the existence of a comprehensive methodological HTA guideline and the duration of time that a country has maintained an established HTA procedure. Category two attributes higher scores to countries with HTA focusing on comparative clinical effectiveness versus countries with a focus on cost-effectiveness or budget impact analyses. Category three scores countries higher if they have a co-chair function in the EU HTA Member State Coordination Group. The final category is scored according to the frequency that countries were involved as author, co-author, or reviewer in EUnetHTA assessments between 2016-2021. The expected uptake score is composed of the influence score plus two additional categories: previous use of EUnetHTA joint or collaborative assessments, extracted from the EUnetHTA 2020 final report, and reference to EUnetHTA methodology in the country guideline.

RESULTS: France, Netherlands, Portugal, Germany and Spain are expected to be the five most influential countries with respect to JCA production. Whereas, for uptake, the highest scores are for Portugal, France, Netherlands, and Ireland, followed by Austria, Croatia, Germany and Spain.

CONCLUSIONS: Based on our scoring system, the countries expected to be most/least influential are not necessarily those for which the highest/lowest level of uptake is anticipated.