Latest Conference Articles

Drug pricing seemed like an appropriate topic for ASCO's town hall as the Trump administration has made lowering the cost of medications a major objective. By doing so, the administration has put out a series of proposals looking to address the cost of drugs, such as the International Pricing Index (IPI), and the recently finalized rule around direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceutical companies.

Erich Mounce, chief operating officer, OneOncology, discusses the importance of palliative care and how it impacts quality of life.

“How do you currently collaborate with your primary care colleagues in caring for patients with cancer?” This was how Larissa Nekhlyudov, MD, MPH, opened a session titled “Bringing the Primary Care Physician Back Into Cancer Care,” during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Annual Meeting, held in Chicago, Illinois from May 31-June 4, 2019.

People with mental illnesses often turn to using substances for self-medication, but this combination causes many problems that worsen quality of life, said Jonathan Avery, MD, director of addiction psychiatry, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Susan Mani, MD, vice president of Clinical Transformation and Ambulatory Quality at LifeBridge Health, discusses barriers to understanding the return on investment of social determinants of health initiatives.

Psychiatrists can use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to help patients with psychosis understand and explore their own beliefs and to develop the therapeutic relationship, according to David Kingdon, MD, professor of mental health care delivery, University of Southampton.

Rose Gerber, director of patient advocacy and education for the Community Oncology Alliance, discusses how different structural barriers create access issues for patients looking to participate in clinical trials.

A computer simulated cost-effectiveness model of fremanezumab for migraine found that it was cost effective versus no treatment. Researchers presented a poster about its cost-effectiveness for the prevention of chronic and episodic migraine at ISPOR 2019.

Ben Jones, vice president, Government Relations & Public Policy, McKesson Specialty Health, offers his thoughts on whether site-neutral payments for outpatient clinic visits under the Outpatient Prospective Payment System will have positive implications for community practices.

Isaac Galatzer-Levy, PhD, assistant professor in psychiatry and bioinformatics, NYU School of Medicine, and vice president of clinical and computational neuroscience, AiCure, describes how his team built a predictive algorithm using machine learning to predict the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The upfront prices of potentially curative therapies are terrifying to commercial payers and government payers alike. A panel on the last day of ISPOR 2019 discussed these issues in a session called, “Is Affordability Driving a Need to Revolutionize Drug Pricing?”

Eleanor M. Perfetto, PhD, MS, senior vice president of Strategic Initiatives for the National Health Council, discusses criticisms of the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and what factors the measure does not take into account.

Nicholas Robert, MD, medical director of Data, Evidence & Insights, McKesson Life Sciences, discusses the benefits of real-world evidence (RWE) for measuring end points, as well as the challenges posed by variability in clinical practice.

Current diagnostic tools, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, rely on symptoms to diagnose psychiatric diseases, but using biological measures instead could provide a more reliable, valid method of classifying these syndromes, said Godfrey Pearlson, MD, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, Yale School of Medicine.

Through OneOncology, we will be able to identify best practices and support patients throughout the continuum of care, explained Jeff Patton, MD, chief executive officer of Tennessee Oncology.

During ISPOR 2019 annual meeting, a session featured biosimilar experts who reviewed the current state of affairs and various challenges related to uptake, while also sounding some notes of optimism.

The 175th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association featured a session on how cultural and ethnic differences could affect reponses to drugs.

Jason Mitchell, MD, chief medical and clinical transformation officer, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, discusses how freestanding emergency departments can be utilized in the move toward value-based care.

Devin Incerti, PhD, lead economist, Innovation and Value Initiative, discusses lessons learned and best practices that have emerged as a result of different approaches to value assessment.

At ISPOR 2019, the concept of real option value—paying for treatment that might keep a patient alive long enough to try a future improved therapy—was discussed.

Representatives from different parts of the healthcare system, as well as an outside observer, weighed in on whether the reports issued by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) are taking away patient choice.

It is incredibly important for these assessments to consider the context of the therapy, rather than just the clinical benefit that it brings, explained Paul Melmeyer, director of Federal Policy, National Organization for Rare Disorders.

Studies presented in posters at the 175th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association demonstrated that the combination of olanzapine and samidorphan kept weight gain below levels typically seen in commonly used antipsychotics.

Efficacy is the primary factor in patients’ decisions to take antipsychotic medications, but weight gain is an important side effect that can also impact those decisions, explained Adam Simmons, director of clinical program management, Alkermes. Simmons was interviewed at the 175th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, where he presented on the investigational drug ALKS 3831.

The poll by the American Psychiatric Association found that young men were especially reluctant to seek mental health care from their employers, even though most workers, especially young ones, said they felt willing to discuss mental health in the workplace.

Panelists at a session of the ISPOR 2019 annual meeting discussed the good and the bad about the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) metric from their various perspectives.

While there are consequences of a 6-month episode of care under the Oncology Care Model (OCM), there will be trade-offs with any time window, explained Basit Chaudhry, MD, PhD, founder of Tuple Health.

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.