Health Technology Wales celebrates second anniversary and sets vision for 2020
On Thursday 19 December, we held an event to showcase our success and celebrate our second anniversary.
Ahead of the Christmas period, we welcomed more than 50 people to the Life Sciences Hub Wales. They came from a variety of sectors, including; health and social care, peer technology assessment organisations, industry and academia.
We were joined by several key decision makers who delivered a series of thought-provoking discussions around HTW and our role to support a national approach to the identification, appraisal and adoption of non-medicine technologies.
“It’s been a real pleasure to mark our second anniversary with representatives from our broad range of stakeholders and to demonstrate the difference we’re making for them,” said Susan Myles, Director of Health Technology Wales.
“We’ve achieved a lot over the last two years. Today we’re celebrating the impact we’ve made for people and care services in Wales, but we’re also taking the opportunity to share and shape our plans for the future.
“We’re very proud to publish the Annual Report 2018-2019 today. This 40-page document details our success over the last two years, highlighting the effect our Guidance has on people and care services in Wales.”
The talks began with Dr Frank Atherton, Chief Medical Officer for Wales, who focused on the ways we are addressing the recommendations from the 2014 inquiry into ‘Access to medical technologies.’ He also covered our work to target the Welsh Government’s health and care priority areas.
Ifan Evans, Director of Technology, Digital and Transformation for Welsh Government, followed and talked about how we are supporting innovation and our busy work programme. He also discussed how we speed up the technology appraisal and adoption cycle in Wales, enabling Wales to be responsive to the constantly changing technology landscape.
A talk about our work to identify non-medicine health technologies was delivered by Dr Rob Orford, Chief Scientific Adviser for Health to the Welsh Government. Over 120 topics have been suggested to us since we were established in 2017, including 83 to our Open Topic Calls.
Our Chair, Professor Peter Groves, led the discussion about our appraisal work. There’s an estimated 77,600 people impacted by our Guidance (per year) and potential cost savings of £5,240,000 (per year)* from our Guidance.
We’ve collaborated with the Bevan Commission throughout 2018 and 2019. Helen Howson, Director of the Bevan Commission, headed a talk about the adoption of our Guidance. She detailed how we’re working to maximise impact and enable evidence-informed decision making by health and care commissioners.
Our senior leadership, Professor Peter Groves and Dr Susan Myles, concluded the afternoon by showcasing our stakeholder engagement and setting our vision for 2020.
There were a number of activities for attendees to interact with throughout the day. We partnered up with illustration students at the University of South Wales to design evaluation boards. The task was built into one of their modules and the final designs were made by second year student Emily Roach. Attendees told us how we’re making a difference and then we asked them to make a pledge to us in 2020.
Click here to download the slidesets.
*This figure is based on the assumption that there would be 50% technology uptake in the absence of HTW Guidance.
