HPV Primary Screening, Belgium

Belgium's national shift from cytology to HPV primary screening, reimbursement secured.

🏆 1st Place – Roche Global Medical Value Summit Award (2015)

The context.

European recommendations had shifted: HPV primary screening, not cytology, was the new first-line strategy for cervical cancer prevention. The question for Belgium was how to translate that recommendation into a reimbursed national programme across the federal regulator, gynaecologists and the pathology infrastructure built around the old model.

What made the difference.

I played a strategic role in enabling national reimbursement for HPV testing:

• Value dossier development — health-economic case built for RIZIV/INAMI with clinical and prevention evidence integrated as one story

• Health economic modelling coordination — cost-effectiveness narrative aligned with what the payer actually needed to fund

• Stakeholder engagement — RIZIV/INAMI, gynaecologists and public health experts briefed in advance, to avoid the classic 'surprise from the top' effect

Principle.

The challenge was orchestration, not invention.

Stakeholders aligned.

RIZIV/INAMI • gynaecologists • public health experts • regional prevention bodies • national prevention stakeholders

Outcome.

HPV primary screening is now implemented with reimbursement coverage in Belgium — making the country one of the modern European adopters of evidence-based cervical cancer prevention aligned with EU-level best practices.

“Public-health screening programmes are among the highest-leverage interventions in EU healthcare. The bottleneck is rarely the science. It's the orchestration.”