Health Technology Assessment of the anti HCV strategies in Italy: evidences from the WEF Project

In the last few years, HTA approach and its use in decision making has become one of the major concerns to be debated in Italy. In particular, physicians feel restricted in their budget spending, but they are often excluded from the decision making process. In addition, evaluations of new drugs are often based on studies which are conducted on different jurisdictions, regardless of the peculiarities of the Italian Health System. In this context the first national pharmacoeconomics workshop (WEF), aims for the first time in Italy to bring together all the stakeholders taking part in the decision making process, to develop concrete proposals and a consistent and holistic view. The WEF is intended to rationalize and to address the debate about qualitative standards for the assessment of health technologies, and to develop concrete an official reports, in line with the "Core" model, developed within the European network of health technology assessments (EUnetHTA). The assessment stage is based on the contribution of a scientific committee of clinicians, economists, pharmacologists, epidemiologists, payers and patients. The appraisal stage involves other participants which are invited the day of the workshop. The first Workshop has treated issues in Hepatology (WEF- E 2011), but the committee's mission is to expand the model to different areas of priority interest of medicine. The first edition of the WEF was held on 27 and 28 April 2011 in Rome, at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Gemelli Hospital. The Scientific Committee of the WEF-E 2011 brought together different professionals: hepatologists, economists, experts HTA, infectious disease specialists, pharmacologists, representatives Institutions responsible for pharmaceutical expenditure, a representative of the patients, an epidemiologist and an expert in bioethics, allowing a 360-degree view of the anti HCV and anti HBV screenings in comparison with the treatment of chirrosis and HCC. Results underlined the high profitability of the screening programs in the area of hepatology from a clinical, economic, organitional and ethical perspectives. In conclusion, the project, which integrates research and dissemination results, aims to represent a new model of approaching the actual concerns of decision making in healthcare, to optimize the best use of resources in order to produce useful results to the scientific community, and to represent new standard applicable in other scopes.