Cost Effectiveness

An initiative run by health technology appraisal (HTA) bodies in the US, Canada and England is looking at how non-traditional treatment benefits, such as the value of hope and scientific spillover, can inform appraisals and understanding of a product’s value.

Pharming has convinced NICE to reverse its rejection of its treatment for APDS by providing the health technology assessment institute with more data. It has also dropped the price it was asking for the drug, which has a list price of £352,000 per year per patient.

Cost and evidence gaps remain barriers for Kisunla and Leqembi as NICE rejects the drugs again but opens further consultations on the reimbursement of the Alzheimer's disease-modifying treatments.

The health technology assessment institute, NICE, has reversed its rejection of Sobi’s once-weekly drug for preventing and treating severe hemophilia A, meaning that the treatment has now secured reimbursement in three European countries.

England’s National Health Service has yet to meet targets for speedy availability of anticancer drugs that have gone through an early access scheme and then been green-lit by NICE.

A new, international group of health technology assessment agencies will work together on topics related to health economic methods that could include dynamic pricing and non-traditional ways of evaluating value in cost-effectiveness analyses.

The health technology assessment institute said its “unique insights” could help companies effectively prepare for their appraisals, potentially streamlining their path through the process, and helping to get innovative technologies to patients faster.

The government’s decision for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee to hold an extra meeting in 2025 has been welcomed by Medicines Australia, which says that Australians already wait on average 466 days from the time a medicine is approved to when it is subsidized.

Medicines Australia has expressed skepticism over the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee’s claim that in March 2025 it will only be able to assess 32 submissions from companies that want to get their drugs subsidized under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

It is time for companies to take part in cross-country health technology assessments and stop asking “what’s in it for me?”