Is ICER Too NICE? A Comparison Of Drug Assessments Programs

23 Dec 2016

Drug companies are accusing the US Institute for Clinical and Economic Review of approaching cost effectiveness assessments in the same way as the UK National Health Service gatekeeper, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

Biopharma manufacturers see troubling parallels between the drug valuation work being done by the independently-operated Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) in the US and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the price-approval body for National Health Service (NHS) drugs.

Companies are particularly concerned about ICER’s reliance on cost effectiveness analyses based on quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which are also...