In a Department of Health executives' consensus meeting held in early 2007, the Minister Sheng-Mou Hou decided to set up a HTA Division within the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) to assist the decision making of Bureau of National Health Insurance (now National Health Insurance Administration) when a new drug was introduced into the market. The HTA Division was officially established on Apr 1, 2008, funded by government grant. Its mission was to establish a transparent, evidence-based health technology assessment system in Taiwan. Its function was to perform efficacy and economic analysis (including comparative clinical efficacy, cost-effectiveness and budget impact analysis), gathering relevant scientific evidence and performing local applicability analysis on pharmaceutical reimbursement applications submitted to the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), Executive Yuan. The HTA analysis results were used to assist the decision making process for reimbursement listing