Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the title of my new paper in Annals of the American Thoracic Society with co-authors David Ost, Fabien Maldonado, Jaehong Kim , Moises Marin, Tony Amos, Deanna Hertz, Iftekhar Kalsekar, and Anil Vachani. The abstract is below. Rational: While previous studies have assessed the clinical or economic value of specific technologies, the economic…
One key aspect of many medications is that they not only help people feel better, but often these medications can help them re-enter the workforce, work more hours, work more productively, or all of the above. However, when evaluating new treatments for diseases that impact older Medicare beneficiaries (≥65 years), should we take into account…
That is the title of a great review paper by Salah Ghabri, Dalia Dawoud and Michael Drummond. They discuss that guidance on the incorporation of adverse events (AEs) into economic models has not been standardized. Nevertheless, this paper provides helpful guidance. Specifically, the paper explores: (1) the incorporation of AEs in economic decision models, (2)…
If a child dies during childbirth, should the impact of the child’s death on parental quality of life be considered? What about interventions that prevent miscarriages; should the health of the fetus be considered or only that of the mother? A paper by Lamsal et al. (2024) conducts a systematic review to examine which individual’s…
A paper by Drummond et al. (2023) examines how health technology assessment bodies deal with the challenge of value assessment for cell and gene therapies (also known as Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) in Europe). To do this the authors: …undertook i) a targeted review of the literature on the clinical and economic evidence needs…
Why is it so hard to estimate the value of orphan drugs indicated for the treatment of rare diseases? There are a variety of reasons, but a scoping review by Grand et al. (2024) provides a nice summary of these issues. Key challenges include small sample sizes for nearly all parameters and lack of data…
Illnesses impact not only the patients, but oftentimes impact caregivers and family members as well. However, most economic analyses do not incorporate a diseases’ spillover impacts on caregivers. …a recent review of NICE evaluations revealed that only 3% of technology appraisals included caregiver health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in cost-utility analyses (CUAs). Similarly, Lamsal [2022]…
That is the topic of a recent white paper from the Innovation and Value Initiative titled “Valuing Rare Disease Treatments in Healthcare: Real Experience, Real Impact“. The report notes a number of challenges in assessing treatment value in rare disease (see my white paper “Challenges in Preserving Access to Orphan Drugs Under an HTA Framework”…
That is the title of a new Health Affairs Forefront article by Peter Neumann and Joshua Cohen. An excerpt is below: One reason economic analyses may yield estimates that are too low is that they ignore the downstream declines in drug prices that occur when competitors enter the market and especially with the introduction of…
Let’s say that you have an international clinical trial that shows a new drug (SuperDrug) perform better than the previous standard of care (OldDrug). Also assume that individuals with a specific comorbidity–let’s call it EF–respond less well to the SuperDrug treatment. If you live in a country where comorbidity EF is common, how well do…