Benefiting from the Promise of Personalised Medicine: Recent OHE Presentations

Focusing on England, these two presentations describe the core economic considerations in making the most of targeted therapy.
OHE’s Adrian Towse participated in a two-day workshop convened by the Biotherapy Development Association to discuss the process and problems that surround decisions about pricing and reimbursement for innovative oncology medicines in Europe.

OHE’s Adrian Towse participated in a two-day workshop convened by the Biotherapy Development Association to discuss the process and problems that surround decisions about pricing and reimbursement for innovative oncology medicines in Europe. His presentation, below, focused on the situation in England, including the context and current status of pricing and reimbursement decisions, issues that are peculiar to England’s approach, and others that are common across countries, including those just gaining attention. The latter principally include HTA for companion diagnostics, which can improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of cancer therapies, and pricing by indication rather than adopting a single price for all of a medicine’s uses.

Personalised medicine holds great promised for both improving patients’ outcomes and enhancing the economic efficiency of treatment. Medicines paired with diagnostics are the backbone of personalised medicine, presenting new challenges for health technology assessment. The situation in England, particularly how NICE might respond to this challenge, was the focus of the third networking event co-sponsored by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA). At this one-day event, speakers set the stage for discussion by describing the context of this challenge for England.

OHE’s Adrian Towse presented on how economic concerns affect development of and access to stratified medicine. He discussed the elements of value of diagnostic tests (see our earlier blog post), and described the conditions needed to both foster useful assessments and ensure subsequent use in the marketplace. His topics included issues of evidence generation, incentives for innovation, the need for flexible approaches to ensuring patients’ access coincident with evidence development, and encouraging uptake and use.

OHE remains at the forefront of efforts to develop workable approaches to ensuring the best use and continuing development of personalised medicine. For a summary of recent activities, please click here.