The Health Information and Quality Authority has today launched national guidelines on stakeholder engagement in health technology assessment (HTA) following a period of public consultation.

Stakeholders include patients, clinicians, service providers and decision makers, and the guidelines outline the appropriate methods for involving them in the assessment of health technologies. Applying the guidelines has the potential to improve the technology assessment process by ensuring that relevant and important issues are considered.

Dr Máirín Ryan, Director of HTA at HIQA, said: “The stakeholder engagement guidelines have been developed to outline best practice for involving stakeholders in technology assessments. The use of engagement facilitates stakeholder input into an assessment, ensuring they have a voice and that their perspective is given due consideration. Stakeholders may include patients or their representative organisations, service providers, health professionals, and policy and decision makers from both the HSE and Department of Health.

“The guidelines are designed to give a high level overview of what stakeholder engagement is, why it should be used, and how it can be done. By incorporating stakeholder engagement in the technology assessment process, we are striving to ensure that funding decisions consider all the people directly affected by the decision.”

The guidelines were developed in collaboration with the Authority’s Scientific Advisory Group before being made available for public consultation and were also circulated to international experts for feedback. Following this consultation, HIQA used the submissions received to inform the final content of the guidelines.

Dr Ryan concluded: “HTA provides valuable information for decision makers by identifying which interventions should be made available for the treatment of patients. So stakeholder engagement should not be viewed as a token gesture or merely to give the impression of inclusivity. The express purpose of engagement is to improve the process and outcomes of HTA, which should ultimately benefit all stakeholders.”

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Further Information: 

Marty Whelan, Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
01 8147481 / 086 2447623 mwhelan@hiqa.ie

Notes to the Editor: 

• Health technology assessment addresses a range of issues associated with the introduction of a health technology.
• These guidelines are part of a suite of guidelines for health technology assessment. The aim of the HTA guidelines is to produce HTAs that provide decision makers with information that is useful, relevant and timely and to ensure that healthcare interventions used in Ireland are clinically effective for patients, are affordable, and are good value for money.
• The guidelines apply to HTA being conducted by, or on behalf of the Health Information and Quality Authority, the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, the Department of Health, and the Health Service Executive (HSE), on all healthcare treatments, including medications, procedures, medical devices, and broader public health initiatives. They are relevant to the assessment of both new and existing healthcare technologies.