Can Health Technology Assessment (HTA) provide a solution to tackle the increasing health-care expenditure in India?

Abstract

The private health-care system in India is effective but expensive. Due to the absence of a comprehensive and well-penetrated insurance scheme that caters to the majority of the Indian population, most of the private health care consultations are out-of-pocket (OOP), and this is pushing many people to poverty. In this article, we describe the concept of health technology assessment (HTA), and review its possible role in improving the health-care system in India. We additionally comment on its present status and possible role of its implementation in the Indian context.

Keywords

• Catastrophic payments
• health insurance
• health technology assessment (HTA)