HTA Kickstart Programme
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is increasingly important for market access of healthcare innovations. HTA is a multidisciplinary process that uses explicit methods to determine the value of a health technology at different points in its product lifecycle, with the purpose to inform decision-making to promote an equitable, efficient, and high-quality health system [1]. HTA is an interdisciplinary field which has increasingly become important in making decisions related to interventions in healthcare and ensuring a sustainable health system. Globally, there are many published guidelines on how to perform an HTA; for Europe the HTA Core Model has been developed which covers nine domains [2]. Through HTA, the use of medical innovations in clinical practice can be evaluated in order to advise and decide on reimbursement.
HTA Core Model Domains
- Health problem and current use of technology
- Description and technical characteristics
- Safety
- Clinical effectiveness
- Costs and economic evaluation
- Ethical analysis
- Organizational aspects
- Patient and social aspects
- Legal aspects
Health-Ecore has extensive experience in HTA and offers a tailored HTA Kickstart programme that prepares innovators in healthcare for this process. This includes our broad catalogue of courses, as well as an intensive programme where a relevant early-HTA of one of the innovator’s products is completed, and all the HTA domains are assessed. This all contributes to making innovation as soon as possible accessible for patients.
After finishing this programme, the innovator:
- Can apply the HTA Core model and is aware of related opportunities, gaps, and risks of their product.
- Understands the main drivers of the outcomes and costs as well as broader economic impacts, related to their product.
- Knows how to incorporate cost-effectiveness analyses into future research.
- Has a validated, early-HTA framework tailored to their product.
Health-Ecore offers:
- Access to our extensive catalogue of e-learning material, including assignments.
- A two-day in-person course to learn the basics of economic evaluations in healthcare and HTA, including hands-on tutorials.
- Intensive counselling in the development of a tailored early-HTA framework.
- A mentor that aids in the whole process to get up to speed on HTA.
The HTA Kickstart is meant for:
- Start-up or scale-up companies that are looking to bring a health-related innovation to the market.
Timelines
Enrolment is open in January, April or September.
- Month 1
- Intensive in-person kick-off course (2 days in person) with all enrolled companies.
- E-learning (flexible) with weekly opportunity to discuss assignments and questions.
- Month 2
- On-site meeting to kickstart the tailored early-HTA framework.
- Bi-weekly meeting to discuss progress on early-HTA framework and provide input.
- Month 3
- An in-person discussion session with all enrolled companies to discuss results and ways to move forward.
- A company-specific meeting (in-person or online) to create a list of important clinical parameters to capture in future research.
Interested? Get in touch with us today!
The Health-Ecore team
Prof. Cornelis Boersma (1978) has a master’s degree in pharmacy and a PhD in pharmaco-epidemiology, health economics and health policy (University of Groningen). He has over 20 years of experience in healthcare from various roles such as scientific researcher, teacher, consultant and the positions he held at the pharmaceutical industry. Cornelis is an independent consultant (Health-Ecore), entrepreneur (Digital Health Link, SensUR Health and PITTS). Cornelis is Professor ‘Sustainable Health and Innovation’ at the Open University and health economic researcher at the University of Groningen/University Medical Center Groningen. Here, his research focuses on health-economic and epidemiological studies as well as health policy/system research. He is supervisor of over 10 PhD-students and has over 50 national and international scientific publications (H-index: 17). In everything he does, he wants to contribute to most optimal, accessible and affordable health(care) for everyone. It is his ambition to invest – in collaboration with private and public parties – in sustainable health(care).
Prof. Maarten J Postma (1960) was educated as an econometrician at the University of Groningen (MSC, 1986) and health economist at the University of Maastricht (PhD, 1998). He currently holds the chair Global Health Economics at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and the department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance, both at the University of Groningen and is director of UMCG’s research institute SHARE. He leads an internationally-oriented team of 100 staff, PhD and post-doc researchers in health- and pharmacoeconomics, contributing to many international research networks and scientific communications. He is specialized in the role of pharmacoeconomics/health economics in the reimbursement process. He serves (served) on various committees advising the Dutch government on reimbursement of drugs and vaccines (CVZ/ZiNL and Health Council). Also, he is advisor to various health-economics consultancy companies and pharmaceutical companies worldwide, Ministries of Health in neighbouring countries, member on advisory boards for pharmaceutical companies, expert consultant for WHO and member of WHO’s SAGE-committees. He is a member of UK’s Joint Committee of Vaccination & Immunization and advisor to the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (Grwp Strategaeth Meddyginiaethau Gymru Gyfam) and Belgium’s Knowledge Center (Kennis centrum). He is involved in 5 spin-off consultancy companies from the University in various roles, inclusive director, shareholder, and advisor. Notably, he co-directs the consultancy Health-Ecore.
Dr. Simon van der Pol (1991) has a background in Pharmacy (PharmD, 2017) and Health Economics (PhD, 2022) both from the University of Groningen. His work as a researcher focusses on implications on HTA of complex interventions, including antimicrobial resistance and other topics with uncertain, long-term effects. Next to his work as a researcher at the University Medical Center Groningen, he initiated a start-up company Orbium Health B.V. that focusses on the economic and societal impact of investments in the Life Sciences and Health sector from a government perspective. After he finalized his PhD in 2022, he joined Health-Ecore full-time as a senior consultant to focus on bringing interventions in healthcare to the market that aid in the long-term sustainability of healthcare systems.
[1] O’Rourke et al., ‘The New Definition of Health Technology Assessment’.
[2] Kristensen et al., ‘The HTA Core Model®—10 Years of Developing an International Framework to Share Multidimensional Value Assessment’.