HTAi 2026 Annual Meeting: HTA Moves From Evaluation to System Shaping

The HTAi 2026 Annual Meeting brought more than 780 delegates from over 64 countries to Istanbul, Türkiye, from 6 to 10 June 2026. The theme, “HTA as a system shaper,” ran through a week of workshops and plenaries on how health technology assessment can move past judging single technologies and help shape the health systems of tomorrow.

Two days of pre-conference workshops opened the meeting, covering health equity and patient-centred HTA, artificial intelligence and evidence generation, digital health, and policy and implementation. The welcome reception followed at a dockside venue outside Bahcesehir University.

Opening the HTAi 2026 Annual Meeting

The opening ceremony featured a regional welcome from Kemal Memişoğlu, Minister of Health of the Republic of Türkiye, and remarks from HTAi Executive Director George Valiotis and President Ann Single. The keynote came from Jennifer Goldsack, founder and CEO of the Digital Medicine Society, who walked the audience through her own health journey and the gaps that remain when patient experience is left out of care.

The first plenary made the case for HTA as a system shaper. Speakers argued the field should look beyond appraising individual interventions and instead guide prioritization, governance and resource allocation across programs and technology lifecycles. That means moving from reactive to proactive decisions, using horizon scanning and foresight, and widening what counts as value to include equity, trust and sustainability alongside clinical evidence.

From evidence to action

The second plenary turned to what happens when evidence is put to use. Panellists shared examples of HTA changing guidelines, budgets and access, and stressed that impact does not need sweeping reform: small, repeatable steps can shift how decisions are made. The third plenary focused on the practical work of implementation, from “green HTA” approaches that fold in environmental impact to capacity building that fits local contexts rather than copying high-income models.

Awards, leadership and next year

The David Banta Distinguished Career Award, HTAi’s highest honour, went to Dr. Laura Sampietro-Colom of Clinic Barcelona University Hospital. The Egon Jonsson Award recognized Grutters and colleagues for their consensus work on defining early HTA, and the group donated the prize money to all4small, a Dutch foundation supporting preterm infants. Melissa Pegg received the Top Reviewer Award, and presentation awards went to Chris Suharlim, Marcelo Correia, Aline Santos and Trudy D Leong.

The Annual General Meeting shared HTAi’s approved Strategic Plan and thanked outgoing board members Grace Huang and Ken Bond. Dalia Dawoud and Yingyao Chen joined the board, and Eva Turk was re-elected. President Ann Single, the first HTAi president from a patient-representative background, closed the meeting, and the 2027 event was announced for 12 to 16 June 2027 in Brussels, Belgium.