Health Technology Wales 2021 Annual Report is published

We are pleased to announce the publication of our 2021 Annual Report, which describes the work we have carried out in the last year to improve health and social care for the people of Wales.

Since being established in 2017, HTW has published 23 pieces of national guidance on health and social care technologies with the potential to impact 188,680 individuals each year in Wales.

In 2021 we continued to assess non-medicine health and care technologies and issued six pieces of national guidance, while also supporting Welsh Government in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We were appointed a Collaborating Partner of the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre in March 2021 and carried out a series of rapid evidence reviews and summaries on COVID-19 related topics that played a major role in supporting COVID-19 policy decision making by stakeholders.

Another key achievement was the establishment of a working partnership with Social Care Wales which led to the publication of a Social Care Action Plan aimed at mapping out how we could better support the social care sector in Wales. This also led to the publication of our first piece of social care guidance on START – a programme to support carers of those with dementia.

We continued to engage with stakeholders, both in the UK and globally, collaborating with international partners to create position statements for the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA) and winning the 2021 David Hailey Award for best impact story. Meanwhile we ensured that patient groups and those receiving and using care services were involved in the health technology assessment process through our patient and public involvement (PPI) work.

While our core work continues to focus on health technology assessment, in 2021 we began the pilot of our adoption audit which will now be completed on an annual basis and aims to ensure that our guidance has an impact by improving access to effective and cost-effective technologies across Wales.

Professor Peter Groves, Chair of Health Technology Wales, said: “Throughout 2021 we continued to balance our commitment to supporting Welsh Government in their response to COVID-19 and carrying out our core function of selecting, appraising and promoting the adoption of non-medicine health technologies to improve the lives of people in Wales.

“Our vision is to continue to develop a world class HTA organisation that ensures that health technologies that have the most potential to improve the health and care of people and offer the greatest value are recognised and adopted in Wales. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners across the health and care sectors in 2022 to achieve this goal.”

We hope you enjoy reading our report and we are looking forward to building on our work and continuing to work in close partnership with stakeholders in 2022.

Click here to read the Health Technology Wales 2021 Annual Report