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Health technology assessment (HTA) was introduced in Australia for the reimbursement of pharmaceuticals in 1992 and in the following years for procedures, diagnostic tests, and devices. The Australian health system is largely funded by the government. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a national list of prescription pharmaceuticals for which the patient pays a small copayment. HTA submissions to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are assessed by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. The Medical Benefits Scheme provides ambulatory medical services and HTA submissions are assessed by the Medical Services Advisory Committee. This article describes the processes of reimbursement in Australia as well as the special case of codependent technologies (eg, diagnostic test and a therapeutic drug) where a combined Medical Services Advisory Committee and Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee application is required. There are many future challenges for HTA in Australia, with growing pressure to provide early access to promising treatments and high cost personalized medicines looming on the horizon. However, Australia is well placed to deal with these issues as the early adoption of HTA and coexistence between industry, academia and the payer has proven to be a fertile environment for developing capacity to undertake and evaluate HTA., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Objectives: Quality-adjusted life-years are the common outcome measure in contemporary economic evaluations in health care. Due to the limitations of the sensitivity of the EQ-5D-3L in specific disease conditions, the EuroQoL group has developed a new EQ-5D-5L classification system with 3,125 health states. This study estimated the Sri Lankan value set for the EQ-5D-5L using a crosswalk methodology., Methods: The EuroQoL group had developed a crosswalk methods to obtain interim value set for the EQ-5D-5L health states using available EQ-5D-3L values. This was achieved by mapping EQ-5D-3L and EQ-5D-5L ratings through cross tabulations by each dimension level. Using above official EuroQoL crosswalk probabilities, an interim value set for the Sri Lankan EQ-5D-5L health states were generated based upon the Sri Lankan EQ-5D-3L value set (which was estimated using time trade-off method: n= 780). Comparison were conducted between the Sri Lankan EQ-5D-5L values and other countries., Results: The Sri Lankan EQ-5D-5L recorded utility value of -0.73 for the worst health state and 0.85 for a best possible utility for a health state other than the full health. The UK (mean= 0.4) and Japanese (mean = 0.45) EQ-5D-5L mean utility values were higher than the Sri Lankan values (mean = 0.07). However, Thailand median values (0.21) were closer to the Sri Lankan median values (0.14) than the UK (0.41) or Japan (0.45)., Conclusions: This study produced the Sri Lankan EQ-5D-5L interim value set using crosswalk methods. Currently, this is the only EQ-5D-5L value set available for the South Asian region., (Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.)