Health Technology Assessment

Building on the insights from the 2024 HTA SIG Workshop, Lymphoma Coalition hosted the 2025 session in Amsterdam on 6 October 2025, bringing together representatives from 13 countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

This year’s workshop continued to strengthen Member engagement in health technology assessment by fostering shared learning, practical skill-building, and deeper exploration of emerging HTA trends.

The workshop also provided a space for Members to compare country contexts, exchange best practices, and identify common challenges and opportunities in advocating for equitable access to lymphoma and CLL treatments.

In the lymphoma treatment landscape, new therapies and emerging biotherapeutic products are transforming cancer care and treatment. Health technology assessment (HTA) systems for medicines and other health technologies differs across countries and regions.

Patient involvement in HTA helps to ensure the patients' perspective on the value of technologies is considered however, patient organisations are often resource constrained. Patient organisations are often expected to collect and incorporate evidence for HTA submissions that best reflects their respective patient community, including patient experiences and unmet needs. This data is not usually readily available and there is an added cost in securing it in a validated, credible manner. Additionally, the collection and analysis of data involves a unique skillset that may not be available in the local patient organisation.

Involving health care professionals and scientific societies in HTA processes is key as they bring valuable expertise and insights on the impact of health technologies. In many countries, scientific societies are engaged in the HTA process to provide input to assessments and reporting, as well as contribute to public health information and the evaluation of the impact of health technologies on care pathways.

Rare diseases affect millions of people worldwide. There are more than 80 different indolent and aggressive lymphoma subtypes, each with different diagnostic evaluation, treatment protocols, characteristics, indications, sub-populations, and outcomes. Many countries have prioritised rare diseases in their national health agendas or rare disease plans to address the unmet needs of patients in the rare disease space and promote research, improve access, and increase awareness.

The report, Health Technology Assessment Similarities and Differences in Mechanisms, Systems and Processes across 27 Countries is available for download in both A4 and letter size file format. To learn more about specific terms or definitions used broadly within the reports, please refer to the HTA glossary.