A capacity-building programme in health technology assessment for hospital pharmacists in a low- to middle-income country

Health technology assessment (HTA) provides evidence-based recommendations for decision-makers at all levels. One of the main challenges is limited human resources for performing HTAs. Therefore, the Centre for Drug Policy and Technology Assessment in the pharmacy department at King Hussein Cancer Centre initiated a comprehensive programme to build pharmacists’ capacity in conducting HTAs. To describe the development of the programme and highlight the encountered challenges and lessons learned. The ADDIE model, a common method for designing structural education programmes, was used. The model consists of five stages: analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. A needs assessment guided development of a structured training programme with eight rotations. The first four rotations were used to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of a health technology. Rotations five and six were used for the economic evaluation and the last two for pharmacovigilance and monitoring use of a technology after its adoption. A pilot study of implementation was successful, with the graduation of the two participants who were able to complete the assigned HTA project. Our experience shows that a structured HTA capacity-building programme can be developed and implemented in a country with limited resources.