Cross-Border Network Collaboration

What are likely to be the HTA priorities of the AUS-CAN-NZ-UK Collaboration Arrangement? Key players have recently offered some insights.   Meindert Boysen, Head of International Affairs at NICE, and Nicole Mittman, Chief Scientist and Vice President, Scientific Evidence, Methodologies and Resources at CADTH, were interviewed in the latest NICE Talks podcast. Boysen disclosed that “we are exploring ways to work together better in understanding what technologies are coming to the market.” The focus of horizon scanning includes “how to respond to Alzheimer's disease, to obesity, to public health interventions that are coming our way, to the digital technologies that are clearly making an entrance into the market and to new medical technologies in general.”   Boysen also highlighted “work we're doing with CADTH and others on the validation of surrogate outcomes for health economic modelling.” However, he considers the outstanding success of partnership with CADTH to date to be “a more consistent approach to handling of confidential data” and striking the balance between transparency in decision making and respecting the rights of health technology developers.   That reassurance will be crucial to convince manufacturers that #crossborder co-operation can benefit them, not just HTA agencies: “They will see these international collaborations as a way to make a more predictable system of HTA to allow them to be better prepared. It will be more straightforward, and that's especially important, I think, in light of the international collaborative work by regulators—and we've seen regulators who are looking at benefits and risk of technologies they've been working on, the umbrella of ORBIS and the Access Consortium and sharing their work. And I think that's an area where we can do a lot more.” Joint scientific advice will also be a priority.   Mittman sees the success of the partnership lying in “ensuring that we are aware of new technologies that come through to us in advance so we can start to think about what outcomes matter. We can start to engage patients earlier. We can start to think about the methods earlier, and we can start to think about how ready our health systems are for those new technologies. And I think that's something else that—as we start to enhance our collaborative effort and partnerships—if we can try and do that collectively across not only our two jurisdictions but even globally, about how are we ready and prepared for these new sort of complex technologies and how can we collectively deal or review and appraise the technologies to ensure that patients get the most value.”   The collaboration will also tackle methodological issues. Mittman cites the use of artificial intelligence and synthetic cohorts in HTA as topical examples, along with “guidance on the surrogate outcomes or you know how do we think about perspectives and how do we value what pieces of evidence need to be at the table when we deliberate.” #AUSCANNZUK

💸 Tokenisation for cross-border payments – new update 💸 According to today’s update from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): ✅ 40+ private sector financial firms ✅ + the Bank for International Settlements  ✅ + leading central banks will join Project Agorá to explore how tokenisation can enhance wholesale cross-border payments. ❓ What is Project Agorá? Project Agorá (Greek for "marketplace") is a public-private collaboration. 7️⃣ central banks:  ✔ Bank of France (representing the Eurosystem) ✔ Bank of Japan ✔ Bank of Korea ✔ Bank of Mexico ✔ Swiss National Bank ✔ Bank of England  ✔ Federal Reserve Bank of New York will work in partnership with the selected financial firms, and the Institute of International Finance (IIF) will act as the private sector convener. ❓What challenges does it seek to solve? Challenges for cross-border payments include different legal, regulatory and technical requirements as well as various operating hours and time zones. There is also increased complexity of carrying out financial integrity controls (eg customer verification and anti-money laundering), often repeated several times for the same transaction. ❓And how? The project builds on the unified ledger concept proposed by the BIS. ✳ Will investigate how tokenised commercial bank deposits can be integrated with tokenised wholesale central bank money in a public-private programmable core financial platform. ✳ This could enhance the functioning of the monetary system and provide new solutions using smart contracts and programmability, while maintaining its two-tier structure. ❓Who can participate? Participating firms must:  ✅ be regulated in a participating jurisdiction as a commercial bank, payment services provider, or financial market infrastructure company  ✅ be significantly involved in cross-border payments  ✅ have innovation expertise Firms represent a diversity of private sector partners in terms of business models, institution size, expertise and geography. The BIS and the IIF selected a diverse set of firms from applicants that met the eligibility requirements and other criteria. Project Agorá will now begin the design phase of the project. ......... 🤔 What are your thoughts? #tokenisation #tokenization #BIS #crossborderpayments #payments #BoE

Building #CrossBorder Alliances for driving and accelerating innovation in Cross Border Payments (Part 2 of 2) The solution lies in fostering collaborative #ecosystems that bring together fintechs, traditional financial institutions, regulators, and governments. Here's how we can build these alliances and drive innovation (its a long list and its not exhaustive): Embracing Cutting-Edge Technologies ✔ Using #Blockchain and DLT can provide a shared, immutable ledger for recording transactions, reducing intermediaries and increasing transparency ✔ Use of #AI can enhance fraud detection, automate compliance processes, and optimize currency exchange rates Forging Partnerships between Fintechs and Traditional Players ✔ Traditional banks & remittance co. can partner with fintechs to modernize their offerings ✔ Collaboration between Intl #Innovation Hubs where fintechs and traditional institutions can collaborate, share ideas, and test new solutions in a controlled environment. Pursuing Regulatory Harmonization ✔ Implement cross-border regulatory sandboxes to allow fintechs to test innovative solutions in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. ✔ Work towards common regulatory standards for KYC, AML, and data protection across regions to reduce compliance complexity. ✔ Invest in RegTech solutions to automate and streamline compliance processes across borders Fostering Intergovernmental Cooperation ✔ Collaborate on the development of interoperable CBDCs to facilitate seamless cross-border transactions (Project mBridge, Agora to name two such initiatives) ✔ Support initiatives such as Project Nexus. ✔ Establish frameworks for secure, privacy-compliant data sharing across borders to enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments. Standardization and Interoperability ✔ Accelerate the adoption of ISO 20022 as a global standard for payment messaging to enhance data richness and interoperability. ✔ Develop and adopt common API standards for payment initiation, account information, and transaction status across different systems and countries. Focus on Financial Inclusion ✔ Develop cross-border payment solutions that are accessible via mobile devices to reach underbanked populations. ✔ Utilize alternative data sources and AI to assess creditworthiness, enabling cross-border microlending and remittances for underserved communities. Enhancing User Experience ✔ Implement end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments, providing transparency and certainty to users. ✔ Create unified digital identity solutions that streamline customer onboarding across multiple jurisdictions. The key to success is a multi-faceted approach as we build these global and domestic fintech alliances, we're not just improving a payment system – we're creating a more interconnected, inclusive, and efficient global economy. The journey has begun, but there's still much work to be done. #Fintech #CrossBorderPayments #FinancialInnovation #GlobalAlliances

Digital money and digital assets are becoming easier to transport across borders, as network interoperability stands to drive #web3 adoption of tokenized assets. The innovations are underway to interconnect and interoperate various public/ private blockchains with today's financial infrastructure, as evidenced by the recent technical collaboration between Chainlink-developed Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and Swift. A report from Swift, the global financial messaging network, highlighted that its existing messaging standards, in conjunction with the Chainlink CCIP, have the potential to facilitate interoperability between traditional financial systems and emerging blockchain technologies. Full report is attached below. Swift collaborated with several major financial institutions on the experiments, including Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, Clearstream, Euroclear, Lloyds Banking Group, SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) and The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Chainlink was used as an enterprise abstraction layer to securely connect the Swift network to the Ethereum Sepolia network, while Chainlink’s CCIP enabled complete interoperability between the source and destination blockchains.