The Minister of Health, Dr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu has tasked the newly inaugurated Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Committee, to bridge the gaps in identifying the most cost-effective diagnostic, preventive and curative decisions on vaccines, medicines, screening and preventive programs.

Speaking at the inauguration of the steering and technical committees for HTA, the Health Minister said the policy direction of the Ministry on Health Technology assessment is to establish a steering committee and technical expertise for HTA to meet health system demands, establish protocols for benchmarking for development and use of HTA in Ghana.

“The purpose of conducting HTA is to inform policy decisions mechanisms and decision making within the policy process and encompasses the application of organized knowledge and skill to decisions on medicines, medical devices, vaccines, procedures and systems developed to solve a health problem to improve the quality of life.”

Institutionalizing HTA in Ghana will seek to ensure that policy decisions at all levels of the health system are based on evidence and such evidence include evidence from HTA,” he said.

The Minister also urged them to establish technical expertise for HTA to meet health system demands and facilitate its application among other things to optimise its uptake in all relevant decision-making processes.

Health Technology assessment HTA, is the systematic evaluation of properties, effects and or impacts of health technologies and interventions.

Health authorities and other stakeholders adopted the Health Technology Assessment to minimize waste in the medical field.

The Assessment has been in existence over the past three decades as an aid to policy making to generate the needed evidence to provide information to policymakers.

Experts hope the technology assessment would make decisions much more rational and less subjective.