Dear colleagues,

I am delighted to invite you to the forthcoming International Meeting for HTA- Emerging Countries at Ankara from March 4-6, 2009.

Modern health-care is highly cost-intensive and technology dependent; thereby necessitating systems for ensuring accountability and value-for-money. In developed countries, this is done through Health Technology Assessment (HTA), a broad discipline that enables decision-making in health-care to be based on transparent and reproducible scientific methods. Sadly, such well-developed systems do not exist in most emerging economies. On the brighter side, in this era of globalization there is a healthy trend of sharing experience and expertise, especially in the field of health-care.

This conference has the unique concept of drawing on the expertise of professionals around the world, who have made a difference to the practice of health-care in their individual settings, and are also willing to share their experience with others. This is the basis for choosing the theme of this conference as “Sharing Experience and Expertise”. Interactions and deliberations among experts from 30 countries and participants from no less than 200 emerging economies is envisaged to foster a culture of health technology assessment in these countries. To put it metaphorically, we have to ‘SEE’ (share experience and expertise) in order to ‘see’ HTA developing in emerging economies. You would notice this concept in the rather unusual logo of our conference also.
We are indeed fortunate to have the support of the World Health Organization (WHO), leading HTA institutions and key experts from developed and developing countries, in this important initiative.  On behalf of the Organization Committee, I invite you to partner us in this unique scientific programme, so that we can work together to initiate and sustain HTA all over the world.
I look forward to welcoming you personally in Ankara in March 2009.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Rabia Kahveci
President, KDTD

Organized by,

Auspiced by, T.C. Sağlık Bakanlığı

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