HTA in a Time of Transformation

The pace, scale, and interconnected nature of today's global changes are placing increasing pressure on health systems as they work to provide effective, equitable, and sustainable care.  Geopolitical instability, demographic change, increasingly complex and rapidly evolving innovations are reshaping the conditions under which health systems function and make decisions. At the same time, rising costs of new therapeutic options and increasing strain on public systems are intensifying difficult questions around affordability, and prioritization. These shifts do not occur in isolation: health systems, economies, and societies are increasingly interconnected, meaning a decision in one context can quickly create ripple effects across others. At the same time, digital health, artificial intelligence, and expanding access to health data are transforming not only how evidence is generated, but how it is interpreted, evaluated, and applied across the lifecycle of technologies and interventions. These developments create extraordinary opportunities, but they also introduce new challenges around bias, misinformation, transparency, trust, and implementation. Across both established and emerging health systems, the ability to to connect patient and societal needs with health technology assessment, decision-making, and real-world impact remains an urgent priority. These are not incremental pressures. They demand an HTA response equal to their scale.

These pressures also clarify what HTA is uniquely positioned to contribute.  Across decades and contexts, HTA has demonstrated its ability to evolve while maintaining rigorous standards and a focus on outcomes: adapting its methods, incorporating new sources of evidence, engaging broader definitions of value, and supporting the responsible introduction— and, where appropriate, disinvestment— of health technologies within health systems. HTA has helped build the evidence architecture on which modern health systems rely, while continuously responding to changing technologies, policy expectations, and societal needs. Today, as health data ecosystems expand, and as systems everywhere face mounting pressure to deliver more effective, equitable, and sustainable care, HTA stands at a moment that calls for confidence, leadership, and vision.

The HTAi 2027 Annual Meeting asks what it means for HTA to remain a trusted and strategic contributor in this environment. Trust is not a soft concept. It is the foundation on which HTA's influence depends: allowing evidence to inform decisions, decisions to support implementation, and implementation to improve outcomes and meet the needs of patients, communities, and health systems. In a time shaped by uncertainty, competing priorities, misinformation, and growing scrutiny of institutions, HTA's commitment to rigorous methods, transparency, independence, and meaningful engagement becomes increasingly important. Importantly, trust is earned not only through the quality of assessments themselves, but through their lived impact within health systems and patient pathways.

HTA is increasingly being asked to support broader forms of decision-making: informing prevention strategies, diagnostics, vaccines, early intervention pathways, digital health technologies, and population health approaches alongside traditional assessments of medicines and devices. This shift is not about abandoning HTA's foundations, but about strengthening its ability to address the priorities health systems now face. It also requires moving beyond isolated product-level decisions toward more system-level thinking: understanding opportunity costs, making trade-offs more transparent, supporting the adoption of high-value innovation, and identifying where disinvestment from low-value care can create space for better outcomes. Healthcare is an investment in societal resilience, economic productivity, public trust, and collective wellbeing.

The Annual Meeting will also engage openly with a global HTA field that is evolving in different ways across different regions. For systems with mature HTA institutions, the challenge is to continue advancing methods to strengthen implementation, embrace digital transformation, and ensure innovation supports equity as well as efficiency to meet patient and societal health-related needs. For systems where HTA institutions and processes are still developing, there is an opportunity to help shape future-oriented approaches that connect evidence generation, regulation, purchasing, implementation, learning health systems, and priority setting from the outset. Across all contexts, HTA must remain grounded in the decisions that matter most to patients, communities, and health systems.

Brussels is a fitting setting for this conversation. It sits at the intersection of European health policy, regulatory development, and global health collaboration. With Joint Clinical Assessments and Joint Scientific Consultations already operational under the European HTA Regulation, the meeting convenes at a moment when the HTA community is learning from early implementation experiences while also beginning to reflect on the future evolution of the framework ahead of its first planned revision. HTA’s potential to strengthen coordination, reduce unnecessary duplication, support trusted innovation, and improve decision-making across systems has rarely been more visible. The challenges of translating assessment into impact remain significant, making this an important moment for reflection, collaboration, and action.

The HTAi 2027 Annual Meeting is a call to act on that moment. To strengthen the trust that allows evidence, recommendations, and research outputs to be embedded in policy and practice. To ensure that HTA continues to evolve as a trusted framework for helping health systems make difficult, evidence-informed decisions in a rapidly changing world. As a long-standing forum for civil discourse among parties with differing perspectives, the HTAi Annual Meeting remains a place where complex challenges can be explored openly, disagreement can be constructive, and shared solutions can begin to emerge.