On the 5th of April of 2018, Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefit Agency (Tandvårds- och läkemedelsförmånsverket, TLV) has published a positive decision for inclusion of VORTEX nozzle (spare part for VORTEX inhalation container) into the list of pharmaceutical benefits due to lower price of 45.42 SEK per product versus comparators.

On the 16th of April, 2018, the new classification of diagnosis codes (ICD-10-SE) was released by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). Seventeen new diagnosis codes were added in 2018.

In mid-April 2018, the Galician HTA body, Avalia-T, has published a rapid evaluation report on screening of fetal trisomies 21, 18 and 13 by non-invasive prenatal testing. The report was done within EUnetHTA framework.

In April 2018, Oleg Borisenko with support from the MTRC launched an international stipend and mentoring program. The objective of the program is to support medical students in developing countries with achieving maximum results in a medical profession. For the first round of the program (six months until Oct 2018), three students were selected. The program includes a stipend, bi-weekly meetings on different subjects (goal setting, evidence-based medicine, clinical epidemiology, medical experiment, marketing, publication standards and others) and a personal mentoring of Oleg Borisenko.

In the first half of April, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published one new medtech innovation briefing for device that usesroutinely available datasets to help identify people who are at high risk of developing colorectal cancer.

The report “Development Trend 2018” will help to provide a basis for analyzing the environment for eHealth and creating a frame of reference for understanding the eHealth development.

In February of 2018, Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefit Agency (Tandvårds- och läkemedelsförmånsverket, TLV) has published a number of consumable medical devices, which were excluded from the list of pharmaceutical benefits per manufacturers’ request.

On 5th of April, 2018, the Board of Directors of SwissDRG SA has given the director the mandate to establish, where appropriate, codifications by analogy in agreement with the Federal Statistics Office (FSO). The regulation from April of 2018 covers CytoSorb for removal of cytokines.

The CEO of MTRC co-authored the article "Cost–utility analysis of bariatric surgery", published in the leading European surgical journal, British Journal of Surgery. Analysis indicated that currently used surgical methods in England were found to be cost saving over the lifetime of individuals treated in England.

Emilia Romagna Region published a preliminary information report on the Equistasi® device, a wearable proprioceptive stabilizer for rehabilitation of postural instability in Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and athletes.

At the beginning of March, 2018, the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialtyrelsen) has published the instruction with the amendments for coding of infected wounds. Several clarifications to the use of these diagnosis codes were implemented.

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has selected four out of 31 themes for the future health technology assessments, which were proposed by the citizens at the web-site of ThemenCheck Medizin service and will presumably be published at the beginning of 2019. The next process of topics’ selection will start in August of 2018.