In response to the World Health Assembly Resolution 67.23, the WHO Secretariat conducts a survey to assess the status of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in member states. The objective of the survey is to track the practice and development of country processes for HTA, establish a database of HTA country profiles, and raise awareness, foster knowledge, and encourage the practice of HTA and its uses in evidence-based decision making. The first round of the global survey was conducted in 2015 and a second round was implemented in 2020/2021.

As countries move farther along the path to UHC, understanding more around health decision-making and policy tools such as health benefit packages (HBP) becomes increasingly important. For this reason, the latest survey also sought to understand more on country HBP processes, contents and linkages with HTA.  

The 2020/2021 survey on Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and Health Benefit Packages was developed by WHO team members through a review of previous surveys, including the 2015 WHO Global Survey on HTA by National Authorities. In order to develop the instrument, consultations were conducted with experts both within WHO and externally. The survey instrument was also pilot tested in select countries to further refine the questions. The instrument was then translated into relevant UN languages.   

The respondent list consisted of officially nominated survey focal points in member states and areas. To the best degree possible, official responses were sought, and when not possible, a protocol was followed for obtaining responses from relevant experts. Focal points were encouraged to work with additional experts in the survey subject matter when needed. Regular follow-up with the respondents was undertaken by the survey team. Respondents filled in the survey using an online WHO platform. Once completed, the answers were sent back to the respondents for validation.

Questionnaire: 

English | French | Spanish | Russian | Arabic

The Global Summary Dashboard, contains descriptive information for the entire survey sample across the HTA and HBP components and visualizations are provided for responses in different sub-sections of the survey. For the HTA section, each visualization can be filtered by WHO region, income grouping, and decision process level. The HBP section can additionally be filtered by the coverage of the indicated scheme. For visualizations related to the contents of the health benefit packages, a filter to select individual intervention categories or medications of interest can be used.

In the Comparative Interventions Matrix Dashboard, clicking on a Condition/Health area, brings up a page of proxy interventions. Here, interventions are shown for the selected condition/health area across multiple countries and areas. (Users can select multiple countries or areas in the dropdown menu.) 

Detailed Country and Area Results Dashboards provide an interactive area to explore the responses for each major section of the survey (HTA and HBP). The HTA and HBP Country Profiles (HBP forthcoming) are a formatted, downloadable pdf documents of selected country responses designed to give an overview of the HTA and HBP situation in a given country/area.