Bodies of the Institute

Supervisory Board

The Supervisory Board oversees the activities of NIHO and its director and approves the institute's budget. The Board consists of four members. One member is nominated by the Association of Health Insurers, one is nominated by the employees of NIHO, and one each by the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic. The role of a member of the Supervisory Board is to defend the best interests of the institute, not to defend the interests of the institution that nominated them.

Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Ing. Martin Vlachynský,
nominated by the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic

Analyst at the Institute of Economic and Social Analyses (INESS). He is an expert in economic policy, business environment and competitiveness - particularly in the health and energy sectors.

Member of the Board of Supervisors PharmDr. Anna Lukáčová,
nominated by the Association of Health Insurance Companies

Member of the Board of Supervisors Mgr. Adam Markuš,
nominated by NIHO employees

Director of the Finance Department of the State´s Health Insurance Company. In the past, he was involved in auditing, financial management, and controlling of commercial and manufacturing enterprises.

Scientific Advisory Board

It guides and assists NIHO in its scientific aims and methodology. The members of the Scientific Advisory Board have many years of experience in the field of HTA in the foreign contexts. Membership is honorable. The offer is made by the director of NIHO to eminent persons in the HTA field. The Council consists of five members.  

Chris McCabe

Expert in Health Economics and Professor of Health Economics at Queen's University Belfast. He is a former CEO of the Canadian Institute of Health Economics. For over 20 years he has been a professor at leading universities in the UK (University of Sheffield, Warwick and Leeds) and Canada (University of Alberta). He collaborated in the guideline formation for the Canadian HTA institution CADTH and is the founding director of the Decision Support Unit in NICE, England.

Claudia Wild

CEO of the Austrian Institute for HTA (AIHTA) and its predecessor LBI-HTA. As a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, she contributed to the development of the research of health technology assessment in Austria. She teaches at Austrian universities and works in expert boards in the field of HTA at the local as well as international level.

Martin Višňanský

Co-founder and Chairman of the Slovak Society for Pharmacoeconomics SLS and co-founder of the Slovak Agency for Health Technology Assessment. In the past, he was a representative of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic in the EUnetHTA project and also in the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). He teaches pharmacy and HTA courses at universities. He has many years of experience in management positions in public health care institutions and pharmaceutical industry.

Lars Sandman

Director of the National Centre for Priorities in Health and a professor at Linköping University in Sweden. He focuses on organizational ethics issues in health care. He also serves as an ethics advisor for health institutions in Sweden, including the HTA Council, and is a member of the Regional Categorization Committee.

Wija Oortwijn

President of the Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi), based in the Netherlands. She has many years of experience in the field of HTA and with analyses of health policies at the international level. She worked on the projects that were behind the cooperation project of the European HTA institutions, EUnetHTA.

Advisory Committee

The Advisory Committee helps NIHO understand the interests, motivations, and preferences of various interest groups in the field of Slovak health care. Committee members answer complicated questions that do not have an unequivocal answer, for example concerning societal values. A member of the Committee answers questions related to value judgements from his personal position. He or she brings knowledge of the context of the nominating interest group.