PGI’s Research wins First Prize at International HTA Conference in Thailand
Dr. Gaurav Jyani, research scholar at PGI has been awarded the first prize at 10th HTAsiaLink Conference held in Thailand, for presenting the research work on health-related quality of life among the Indian population. This research was also awarded the first prize at the recently held National Conference of Epidemiology Foundation of India held at AIIMS Patna. This nationwide study has been led by Dr. Shankar Prinja, who is professor of health economics at the PGI Chandigarh. The study has been conducted across the states of Haryana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu, for which collaboration was made with prominent institutes of the respective states. While similar studies have been conducted in other countries on smaller number of respondent interviews, this study from PGI is the world’s largest study of its kind.
Talking about policy implications of this research, Professor Prinja told that the findings are of significant use in design of health programs and provision of healthcare in the hospitals. The findings of this study are also being used in Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) to measure the outcomes of patients’ treatments. This information is very useful in assessing the quality of healthcare services provided by the hospitals to the beneficiaries of the Ayushman Bharat scheme, he added. The Government of India’s recently released policy on Value-Based Care has endorsed the use of the findings of this study, which will be applied in a pilot to be done in hospitals across 5 states, where the incentive payment to hospitals will be linked with the outcomes of patient treatment.
The research has led to development of a value-set (a database) for the India, which contains information about the quality of life of the Indian population regarding health conditions of different severity. The value set has also been adopted by India’s Department of Health Research for use in its Health Technology Assessment program and is currently being used by different researchers across India.
The HTAsiaLink conference is a prestigious event among healthcare professionals working in the field of public health. Eminent health economists, scientists and policy makers from more than 35 countries have attended this year’s event, which was organized under the theme of ‘Driving the post-COVID health system through evidence-informed decisions.’ The delegation from PGI headed by Professor Prinja has also organised a teaching session at the conference for the establishment of efficient health technology assessment systems in the countries. This session was organised in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva.
