The National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency (NECA) holds an annual conference to establish its major agenda items relating to healthcare in accordance with the policy environment and social needs, as well as to discuss future directions for the development of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). Furthermore, as the secretariat of HTAsiaLink, NECA plays a leadership role in HTA in the Asia-Pacific region.

The 2018 NECA Annual Conference—celebrating the ninth anniversary of its founding—was held to respond to the domestic policy environment and global social needs, and the theme of the conference was “Expanding Health Insurance Coverage and Health Technology Assessment: Realization of Value-based Healthcare” Many people from various fields related to healthcare participated in the conference, including officials from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, experts in related organizations, as well as specialists from domestic and abroad. The conference was divided into two sections, each of which had a sub-theme. We invited experts abroad who have specialty in the each sub-theme as speakers to share their experiences and made an opportunity to compare those examples with current circumstances in Korea.

In May 2018, the seventh HTAsiaLink Annual Conference was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand. At this conference, leading HTA professionals from around the world held presentations and discussions on the theme of ‘Testing Treatment: Strengthening HTA for better healthcare’ In addition, in order to promote the 2019 HTAsiaLink Annual Conference held in Seoul, NECA carried out various promotional activities such as having a promotional booth and distributing NECA brochures and booklets about the Clinical Research Project for National Health.