CUHK launches regional health economics platform to drive value-based healthcare and policy reform across Asia The Initiative for Technology Evaluation and Cost-effectiveness[...]

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CUHK launches regional health economics platform to drive value-based healthcare and policy reform across Asia
The Initiative for Technology Evaluation and Cost-effectiveness in Healthcare (ITECH) bridges government, industry, and academia to accelerate patient access to life-saving medical innovation

The Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity (HKIDO) of CUHK announces the launch of the Initiative for Technology Evaluation and Cost-effectiveness in Healthcare (ITECH). This milestone initiative establishes a dedicated regional platform to advance health technology assessment (HTA), economic evaluation, and value-based healthcare across Asia.

(Front row, from left) Professor Juliana Lui, Co-Principal Investigator of ITECH and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine; Professor Juliana Chan, Founding Director of HKIDO and Principal Investigator of ITECH and Professor Andrea Luk from the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine.

The Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity (HKIDO) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) today (27 July 2026) announced the launch of the Initiative for Technology Evaluation and Cost-effectiveness in Healthcare (ITECH). This milestone initiative establishes a dedicated regional platform to advance health technology assessment (HTA), economic evaluation, and value-based healthcare across Asia.

Building on successful collaborations with the University of Oxford through the launch of the Mount Hood Diabetes Health Economics Conference in Clinical Decision Making in 2024, together with the Cost-effectiveness Analysis and Health Economic Evaluation in Asia Course in 2025, CUHK has formally established ITECH in response to Hong Kong's accelerating healthcare transformation strategically. The platform provides the rigorous, evidence-driven evaluation infrastructure required to guide medical innovation, inform public reimbursement decisions and ensure the long-term sustainability of the healthcare system.

Meeting the urgent demand for structural healthcare reform in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's healthcare ecosystem is undergoing significant reform. As population ageing intensifies, service demand surges and therapeutic innovation expands, particularly in oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic diseases, advanced biologics, diagnostics, and digital health. While these innovations offer new hope, their high costs have made health economic evaluation central to informing sustainable integration of them into public policy.

Professor Juliana Chan Chung-ngor, Founding Director of HKIDO and Principal Investigator of ITECH, said: "Hong Kong's recent strategic healthcare reforms and accelerated regulatory pathways signal a clear shift towards structured, evidence-based and value-driven frameworks. These initiatives reflect a strong commitment to faster, accountable and data-driven access to healthcare solutions to improve community health and system sustainability. ITECH serves as a regional knowledge hub connecting multiple stakeholders and providing the methodological rigour needed to integrate clinical trial data and real-world evidence into transparent governance with scalable impact."

An evidence-led platform with global impact

Supported by multiple research grants and sponsorships, ITECH's research capacity is already yielding significant international results. Professor Andrea Luk On-yan in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, said: "Powered by big data analytics, ITECH's research capacity is already generating high-impact evidence for a global audience. In 2026 alone, our faculty members published peer-reviewed studies across top-tier medical journals-including Diabetologia, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, and The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific-delivering critical insights into disease burden, health technology assessment, health economics and patient-reported outcomes."

Professor Wu Hongjiang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CUHK's Faculty of Medicine (CU Medicine), a leading data scientist in epidemiology and real-world evidence[1], and an ITECH faculty member, highlighted the practical reach of these research: "Publications by ITECH have delivered critical insights into simulation modelling of cardiovascular, kidney and cancer risks; the cost-effectiveness of biomarker-guided screening; cost trajectories of diabetes complications; chronic kidney disease burden; productivity loss in young-onset diabetes; and global cost-effectiveness modelling for neonatal diagnostics."

Government-academia-industry collaborations with international engagement

Professor Juliana Lui Nga-man, Co-Principal Investigator of ITECH and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine, said that this body of research demonstrates ITECH's methodological leadership in patient-level simulation modelling and the generation of evidence on budget impact, value-based pricing and societal productivity. These methodologies are able to quantify the impact of new healthcare interventions on public expenditure, assess the appropriateness of pricing and evaluate broader societal benefits such as productivity gains, thereby providing a robust evidence base for policymaking.

Through ITECH, CUHK aims to consolidate its multiple modelling platforms to undertake commissioned projects and translate epidemiological heterogeneity into policy-relevant economic insights. These include:

• Formulary and reimbursement decisions by local healthcare authorities;
• Submission of reimbursement applications by industry;
• Planning of clinical trials with embedded economic evaluation;
• Modelling of public-private partnerships for sustainability; and
• Regional harmonisation of HTA standards.

Professor Lui emphasised: "Operating at the intersection of clinical science, epidemiology, health economics and policy, ITECH translates innovation into accelerated approvals with measurable value. This regional knowledge hub builds on long-standing partnerships with leading academic institutions, international health technology assessment bodies and health ministry offices across Asia-Pacific and Europe to align global HTA standards with regional reimbursement practices."

She added: "Beyond generating research evidence, we are committed to delivering structured training programmes in HTA and cost-effectiveness analysis, developing harmonised evaluation frameworks for cross-jurisdictional use, and fostering interdisciplinary fellowships to cultivate the next generation of health economists and policy leaders across Asia."

Shaping a new landscape for value-based healthcare in Asia: CUHK as a regional HTA hub

As healthcare innovation continues to advance, every reimbursement decision carries important economic and ethical implications, calling for independent and methodologically rigorous evaluation to inform clinical practice, policy and reimbursement decisions. ITECH stands as a strategic platform for advancing financial sustainability, scientific rigour, transparency in public resource allocation and equitable patient access in the use of public resources.

Professor Philip Chiu Wai-yan, Dean of CU Medicine, concluded: "ITECH will play a central role in shaping the future architecture of value-based healthcare in Hong Kong and Asia, ensuring that cutting-edge medical innovation translates into measurable value, sustainable financing and equitable access for all."

To learn more about ITECH's research, initiatives, and upcoming programmes, please visit: https://itechhk.org/.

[1] Real-World Evidence (RWE) is the clinical evidence derived from the analysis of information collected from routine clinical practice in order to understand how treatments perform in real life settings.

The Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity (HKIDO) of CUHK announces the launch of the Initiative for Technology Evaluation and Cost-effectiveness in Healthcare (ITECH). This milestone initiative establishes a dedicated regional platform to advance health technology assessment (HTA), economic evaluation, and value-based healthcare across Asia.

(Front row, from left) Professor Juliana Lui, Co-Principal Investigator of ITECH and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine; Professor Juliana Chan, Founding Director of HKIDO and Principal Investigator of ITECH and Professor Andrea Luk from the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CU Medicine.