More spending has lead to better health outcomes
That is according to a paper by Weaver et al. (2022). The authors use expenditure data from the Disease Expenditure Project and DALYs from the […]
HTA
Challenge in HTA for gene therapies
Last month, the Office of Health Economics published a report titled “Health Technology Assessment of Gene Therapies: Are Our Methods Fit for Purpose?” I summarize […]
Estimating quality of life in oncology
How do you measure changes in quality of life for patients with cancer? Today we will review 3 different approaches: health state based, health state […]
ICER’s 2022 “Barriers to Fair Access Assessment” Protocol
How does ICER plan to determine whether health plans offer fair access to pharmaceuticals? I summarized their approach last year as outlined in their white […]
ICER’s updated process for determining unsupported price increases (UPI)
Last month, ICER updated their protocol for identifying drugs that have unsupported price increases (UPI). Not only is ICER examining rising drug prices, but California […]
Gene therapies and the ISPOR value flower
What considerations beyond quality adjusted life years and cost should be considered when evaluating gene therapies? A panel from ISPOR provided just such a discussion. […]
Coverage with evidence development for medical devices in Central and Eastern Europe
The value of medical devices caries with it less certainty than pharmaceuticals for a variety of reasons. As described in Kovács et al. (2022) medical […]
Why is investing in drugs to treat rare diseases an attractive investment for drug companies?
If you were a drug manufacturer, you naturally would want to focus your research on more common, highly prevalent diseases. If there are more patients […]
History and Future of the “ISPOR Value Flower”
That is the name of a recent paper in Value in Health from three of pharmacoeconomics field’s leading scholars: Peter Neumann, Lou Garrison and Richard […]
NICE’s new Severity Adjustment
In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) made an update to their health technology evaluations manual in January 2022. […]
Health Years in Total (HYT)
Standard quality approach compares the difference in QALYs which is a function of survival and quality of life during each survival period. Consider the comparison […]
Challenges in Preserving Access to Orphan Drugs Under an HTA Framework
That is a title of a new white paper from FTI Consulting and Alexion. The key findings from the article are: HTA practices are designed […]
Rare Diseases: A Conversation on Value Assessments
Check out an event this Friday, December 10, at 10am EST/7am PST on at The Hill on Rare Diseases: A Conversation on Value Assessments. A […]
UK-wide whole genome sequencing for newborns is feasible – but there are some key questions to answer first
Genomics England, the Department of Health and Social Care’s genome-sequencing hub, has this year announced that support for whole genome sequencing (WGS) has reached a […]
What does the future of European healthcare look like?
After the “stress test” of COVID, how can the sector create resilient, sustainable healthcare systems for the long term? COVID has taught us that future […]
What is wrong with QALYs?
A paper by Rand and Kesselheim (2021) in Health Affairs this month conducts a systematic literature review to answer this question. Based on 113 articles […]
How to balance the patient voice atop the shifting plates of HTA
The tectonic plates of healthcare technology assessment (HTA) have shifted – but where does the patient voice fit within this new evaluation paradigm? Recent advances […]
Do most Medicare Part D drugs have CEA studies?
That is the question that a recent study by Tisdale et al. (2021) aim to answer. They first look at the top 250 Medicare Part […]
How ICER will conduct it’s “Barriers to Fair Access” Assessment
Last fall, ICER published a white paper titled “Cornerstones of ‘Fair’ Drug Coverage: Appropriate Cost-Sharing and Utilization Management Policies for Pharmaceuticals.” To paraphrase, ICER’s goal […]
Should supply chain quality inform treatment value?
In an article in Health Affairs, Rick van der Vegte and I argue that in four specific cases, the answer is yes. …the International Society […]
ISPOR Summit on Value Assessment
On June 10, I will be presenting at ISPOR’s Summit on “Value Assessment: New Insights, Approaches, and Applications,” which will highlight evolving practices, new methods, […]
Rethinking access barriers to innovation
Market access issues don’t stop once a product has passed HTA – and this is especially true for disruptive therapies like ATMPs. Experts from Executive […]
Galapagos UK’s Michael Smyth on RNA-based tech: the pharmaphorum podcast
Episode 35 of the pharmaphorum podcast hears from Michael Smyth about Galapagos UK and joining the company as medical director just as COVID-19 hit. With […]
Deep Dive: Market Access
It’s fair to say this is the most interesting time ever for market access. Not only has COVID forced companies, governments and healthcare systems to […]
A value framework for diagnostics in Latin America
That is the topic of a recent paper by Augustovski et al. (2021). The authors conduct a targeted literature review of previous diagnostics value frameworks […]
Is value in the eye of the beholder? Value frameworks and inter-rater reliability
A new drug comes on the market. Is the health benefit worth the cost? What is it’s value? Value assessment frameworks are one way to […]
ISPOR Value Flower and Alzheimer’s Disease
Standard cost-effectiveness measures the value of a treatment based on the cost for an additional unit of health where units of health are measured in […]
Technology assessment in rare diseases
What is a rare disease? The definition varies across countries, but according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) rare diseases are those with a prevalence […]
Is the value of a QALY constant?
Standard cost-effectiveness analysis assumes that any gain in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) should be valued equally. This does not sound unreasonable, but is it true […]
Societal vs. health system perspective: does it matter?
Cost effectiveness analysis aims to capture identify (and monetize) all of a treatments benefits, risk and costs and then determine if the treatment is worth […]
2021 market access prospects for France
In the latest of a suite of features looking at the biggest markets in Europe, Leela Barham takes stock of what 2021 could bring for […]
What kind of HTA does the US need?
Should the US have a formal, centralized health technology assessment (HTA) organization? In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) […]
Getting gene therapies to market faster
The FDA approval process is slow. Even for COVID-19 vaccines, the process can be time consuming. However, regulators around the world do have some expedited […]
Okra says AI-based drug price predictor is 90% accurate
UK artificial intelligence startup Okra Technologies has launched a new software platform that it claims can take the guesswork out of the price that can […]
HTA are ignoring the value of reduced caregiver burden
While many health technology assessment (HTA) organizations acknowledge that many new treatments reduce the burden placed on caregivers, the value that these new treatments provide […]
HTA criteria used to evaluate diagnostics
When evaluating a new diagnostic, HTA agencies must assess two separate issues: analytical and clinical validity. Analytical validity basically indicates whether the test works; is […]
HTA criteria used to evaluate diagnostics
When evaluating a new diagnostic, HTA agencies must assess two separate issues: analytical and clinical validity. Analytical validity basically indicates whether the test works; is […]
PCORI to incorporate cost but not cost-effectiveness in its new principles
Created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has funded a wide variety of research comparing different treatments […]
Where — and Why — ICER Really Matters
Check out my interview on the Redeeming Value podcast with Brian Reid. PRECISIONheor Vice President Jason Shafrin pops in to talk about the Institute of […]
How does HTA for orphan drugs differ across europe?
New research looks at the factors that speed up and slow down HTA appraisals for rare disease medicines across Europe. Rare diseases drugs have always […]
