Jonathan Campbell, PhD, associate professor, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, discusses the need for more creative methods for value assessment, as well as how one-time, high-cost therapies make it harder to determine value.

Transcript

With more innovative and high-cost therapies entering the market, is there a need for more creative methods for value assessment?

With novel therapies comes great new opportunities for patients. We have the opportunity to cure cancer for patients that didn’t have that opportunity otherwise. With the novel therapies also comes uncertainty in evidence and alongside that we have a very heterogeneous health system in the US. Novel value assessment allows more flexibility in such a health system and gives a structure to novel aspects to potentially curable therapies.

Are one-time, high-cost therapies like gene therapy, which have limited evidence of long-term value, making it harder to determine value?

Probably yes. Traditional value, being cost-effectiveness, one-time therapies don’t really have a challenge in terms of the cost because those are pretty known up front, but the long-term health outcomes are very uncertain. So, MCDA [multi-criteria decision analysis] can help by incentivizing evidence generation in domains such as caregiver burden and insurance value to aid in a more comprehensive understanding of value.