Listen
An ageing population, social inequalities, regional disparities, financial sustainability, environmental concerns, and accelerating healthcare innovation: these are some of the many challenges faced by our healthcare system. The HAS intends to do its part to help meet these challenges, alongside all the actors in the health, social and medico-social spheres. With this in mind, it now presents its 2025-2030 Strategic Project, following on from the previous 2019-2024 Strategic Project. The aim of this plan, supplementing the work programme set out annually by the HAS based on the various referrals received, is to provide guidance on how the institution will accomplish its missions over the coming years. It sets out three priorities centred on the needs and expectations of individuals, professionals, and public authorities. It also identifies three key themes on which the HAS intends to place a greater focus: prevention, mental health and psychiatric care, as well as digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
An independent public scientific authority set up in 2004, the role of the HAS is to develop quality throughout the health, social and medico-social sphere. In this role, it assesses the benefit of health technologies with a view to their funding, recommends best practices to professionals, and drafts vaccination and public health guidelines. It also measures the quality of care and support. The HAS works alongside public authorities to inform policy decisions on scientific bases, with healthcare professionals to optimise their practices and their organisations, and for the benefit of individuals by reinforcing their decision-making capacity. It is driven by three values: scientific rigour, independence and transparency.
Over the last five years, the HAS has fully implemented the new missions provided for by the law, and has achieved most of the objectives set within the scope of its 2019-2024 Strategic Project. To name just a few examples, extensive work on user engagement has been initiated, over 100,000 patients who had exhausted all other treatment options benefited from early access to medicinal products, the first standard for assessing the quality of social and medico-social establishments and services (SSME) was created... To continue to support developments in the healthcare system, the HAS is now setting itself new strategic priorities.
Three strategic priorities to guide the HAS in its missions
Promoting an integrated approach to individuals’ life pathways
The HAS supports the link between the health, social and medico-social sectors and upholds an overall and cross-cutting health approach. By encouraging coordination among professionals (primary care, hospital, SSME) and better consideration of social health determinants and expressed needs, it aims to improve the pathway of patients and supported individuals. This particularly involves preventing gaps in pathways and increasing the consideration of individuals’ expectations (such as quality of life at home and in establishments), based on technological and organisational innovations. As such, coordinated practice and “outreach” processes will be promoted. More generally, this aim involves basing quality of care and support on individuals’ ability to act.
Defending quality in a stretched healthcare system
Given the current context, the HAS needs to update its expertise, to meet the needs of the healthcare system without losing sight of its purpose: the quality of individuals’ care and support. As such, every day, it is committed to reinforcing the relevance and safety of healthcare professionals’ practices.
In this way, it intends to help conserve human and financial resources in the healthcare system, along with its environmental sustainability. The HAS also wishes to boost its informative role for professionals, public decision-makers and citizens, by injecting new momentum into its medico-economic assessments (as demonstrated by the recent creation of a specific medico-economic assessment department), by enhancing its quality measurement indicators, and greater application of humanities and social sciences. More generally, it plans to facilitate the assimilation of its work by professionals further, by increasing its capacity to update its output, taking better account of the specificities of the targets of each publication, and assessing the impact of the information that it releases.
Preparing the future to consolidate the French model
The HAS wishes to support current and future changes in the health, social and medico-social sector. It plans to boost its capacity to promote genuine innovations among the many new technological and organisational developments, by adapting its methods to meet citizens’ expectations promptly while guaranteeing the quality of its assessments. In addition, it intends to continue its international influence strategy, by playing an active role in building a Europe of Health, and particularly in the rollout of the European Health Technology Assessment Regulation. Finally, by encouraging sharing of experience and collaborations with other actors, its aim is to enhance and promote French expertise, while developing its resilience and responsiveness to the challenges affecting the healthcare system (environmental challenges, crisis situations, etc.).
Key themes to highlight cross-cutting topics
The HAS is strongly committed to prevention and health promotion. By working alongside all of the actors concerned, it intends to identify the needs of the healthcare system in terms of prevention, to highlight the medico-economic benefits of prevention, and to help professionals take better account of social health determinants (income, level of education, employment, etc.).
Other major public health challenges, mental health and psychiatric care, require unprecedented commitment. Over the next five years, the HAS wishes to help improve the detection, diagnosis and care of the most severe disorders, particularly focusing on care and social support for the most vulnerable populations. It particularly wishes to promote prevention and early detection strategies in respect of at-risk behaviours. The upcoming publication of the new mental health and psychiatric care programme fits squarely with this approach.
Regarding the now omnipresent digital technologies and artificial intelligence in health, representing a number of challenges and opportunities for the healthcare system, the HAS would like to see this revolution take place for the benefit of humans. It will endeavour to inform users’ choices and seek out the rightful place of technology. In addition, it will foster prudent use of digital tools through guiding principles.
To achieve its aims, the HAS is committed to advancing its organisation within the scope of a proactive quality approach, by continually adapting its tools and working methods, increasing exchanges with other healthcare system actors, and guaranteeing the quality of its working environment. The project will be adjusted as the need arises, in order to ensure that it remains relevant.
