Professor Mäkelä is the Director of the Finnish Office for HTA (Finohta) since 2000 and has represented Finohta at INAHTA meetings during these past eight years.
She has considerable experience in international collaboration, having served as a Director of HTAi in 2004-2007 and Member of the Board and Chair of the Guidelines International Network. She has also served as an expert of HTA for the WHO and the Council of Europe on several occasions.

Professor Mäkelä is an MD and a specialist in general practice, with 15 years experience of patient care and more than 10 years of teaching the specialty at the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere. She is currently a part-time professor of general practice at the University of Copenhagen. Prof. Mäkelä holds a PhD from the University of Helsinki (in primary care) and an M.Sc. from McMaster University (in clinical epidemiology). She is the first author of the Finnish textbook in health technology assessment (2007) and has written more than 200 scientific articles.

Vision for INAHTA:

INAHTA is a living and flourishing network of public agencies that work with health technology assessment. Especially new and aspiring institutes benefit greatly from interaction with other agencies - while those with more years on their back are happy to introduce new generations of experts to this international crowd. Most of the functions are smooth and practical, and the secretariat provides good support at a reasonable cost.

In the coming years, it will be useful to move into closer discussions with HTAi about joint functions. For example, the collaboration in methodological development is now arranged in a fashion that leaves some uncertainty about reporting, responsibilities and continuity.

An important source of information, the HTA Database that is managed by the University of York, is not always seen as a priority by the members. A more systematic way of providing information about ongoing and finished projects would be good to consider. The searching facilities could perhaps be redesigned and links with the Cochrane Library should be made clearer to the INAHTA membership.

Support to new and aspiring members is an investment in the future of INAHTA. Innovative ways for providing such help could be found and supported.