The meeting included 14 HTA experts that assess Real-World Evidence (RWE) submissions, generate national RWE to inform local pricing and reimbursement decisions, or work at a policy level to support RWE developments in HTA. These experts from across Europe and Canada contributed expertise relating to the use of RWE to support HTA of medicines, devices or medical-device combinations in hospital, regional, national and cross-jurisdictional settings.
The HTA Expert Forum is key to facilitating knowledge exchange between HTA bodies and GREG: exploring the RWE needs of different types of HTA organisations over the lifecycle of a health technology. These discussions will consider issues ranging from Real-World Data (RWD) availability and quality, through to the generation and evaluation of RWE for resolving uncertainties about real-life effectiveness and supporting economic modelling.
This first meeting of the Forum highlighted that HTA decision-making processes vary across jurisdictions in Europe and Canada, but there is enthusiasm to learn from past case studies where RWE informed HTA assessments and coverage with evidence development following conditional reimbursement.
Early identification of decision-relevant uncertainties that could be solved by RWD and robust approaches to RWE generation and reporting is needed. GREG could help by providing tools to improve the quality of RWE submissions made by industry to HTA, and by developing tools that support harmonization of RWE evaluation in different decision-making contexts.
The HTA Expert Forum will meet 2-4 times per year over the lifetime of the GREG project and in future meetings will review emerging guidance and tools.
Leaders and RWE experts from HTA bodies are welcome to apply to join the Forum. Contact Karen Facey karen.facey@ndorms.ox.ac.uk or Leonardo Koeser leonardo.koeser@nice.org.uk for more information.
