In April and May 2023, it was announced that the Galician Agency for Health Technology Assessment (AVALIA-T) initiated several HTAs, including the evaluations in the e-health, nephrology and urology, men’s health, IVD, obstetrics and gynecology, pulmonary and airways, surgical procedures, and some other fields.

On April 28, 2023, the NHS Cancer Programme awarded £12.1 million to six innovations that improve the early detection and diagnosis of cancer. Awarded medical devices, in-vitro diagnostics, and digital health solutions are used to diagnose bowel, skin, liver, breast, ovarian, and esophageal cancer. They have proven their efficacy and clinical effectiveness and will be funded over the next 18 months to support rollout and real-world testing.

In March 2023, Health Technology Wales published an Evidence Appraisal Report (EAR) and Guidance on photobiomodulation for the prevention and treatment of oral mucositis. Furthermore, seven Medtech-related Topic Exploration Reports (TER) were published, including single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation and AI-assisted ultrasound for deep vein thrombosis; however, Health Technology Wales will proceed with a full appraisal on one topic only - digital wound management tools.

The HTA body of the Tuscany Regional Healthcare issues three types of documents: full HTA reports, rapid HTA reports, and motivational forms. With regional decree 8803 of April 26, 2023, Tuscany Regional Healthcare has published assessments of two medical devices in the cardiovascular area.

In late April, NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative introduced the Health Technology Navigation Pathway Tool to help innovators adopt new technologies into the NHS. The Tool breaks the innovation journey down into 25 steps, themed around the five key phases of the product lifecycle, from creation to commissioning and adoption. For each step, the schematic flowchart outlines key organizations to engage with, regulatory insights, best practice approaches, policies, guidelines, to-do lists, and required outputs.

We are happy to announce a further expansion of our HEOR Department with Agni Baka, a health economist from the Netherlands. Agni holds a Master's Degree in Health Economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2013), and she is a PhD Candidate (2023) from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Agni has six years of experience in the field of health economics and European health technology assessment (HTA). Agni combines expertise from both consultancy (Mapi Group in the Netherlands) and academia (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). Agni was involved in health economic research of non-pharmaceutical health interventions in the Netherlands and had a number of health economic publications in peer-reviewed journals (Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Behavioral Sleep Medicine, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity).

In April 2023, the Finnish Coordinating Center for Health Technology Assessment (FinCCHTA) released three health technology assessments in the field of eHealth, including the assessment of Thermidas thermal imaging system as well as two comparison reports of Digi-HTA with NorDEC and DiGAV frameworks.

The French National Authority for Health (HAS) released new recommendations about add-on reimbursement of medical devices and medical aids from the meetings of the National Commission for Evaluation of Medical Devices and Health Technologies (CNEDiMTS) in April 2023. Twenty-three recommendations were published in relation to the registration, modification of registration conditions, and renewal of registration for devices in the List of reimbursable products and services (LPPR). Opinions concern cardiovascular, orthopedic, nephrology and urology, and surgical devices, as well as medical aids.

In April 2023, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published seven new Interventional Procedure Guidance (concerned Daytime intraoral neuromuscular electrical tongue stimulation, endoscopic ultrasound-guided biliary drainage, maximal cytoreductive surgery in ovarian cancer, percutaneous thoracic duct embolization, radiofrequency ablation for spinal metastases, high-intensity focused ultrasound for prostate cancer), one new Medical Technologies Guidance (AposHealth for knee osteoarthritis), and one Medtech Innovation Briefing (Fasciotens for abdominal wall closure). Also, three clinical guidelines were updated.

On April 20, 2023, the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) published the first release of the DRG package for 2024 (RZ24a). Twenty-three new procedure codes, nine new supplementary payments, and thirteen new DRGs will be implemented across gynecology, pulmonary, extracorporeal treatments, and other technology groups.

On April 14, 2023, a repository of innovative acts outside the nomenclature of biology and anatomopathology (RIHN) and a Supplementary list of IVD tests were published. Minor changes were introduced in the 2023 RIHN list.

On April 19, 2023, the Italian Ministry of Health announced that the State-Regions Conference approved the national tariffs for outpatient specialist care and prosthetic care. These tariffs will be applied to Annexes 4 (outpatient specialist care) and 5 (prosthetic care) of the Essential Levels of Care (LEA) document from 2017. New tariffs for outpatient specialist care will enter into force in January 2024, and the tariffs for prosthetic care will enter into force on April 1, 2024.