Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.
A review of NICE appraisals of pharmaceuticals 2000-2016 found variation in establishing comparative clinical effectiveness. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology [PubMed] Published 17th September 2018
The first paper in this week’s round-up is on the topic on single arm studies; specifically, the way in which the comparative effectiveness of medicines granted a marketing authorisation on the basis of single arm studies have been evaluated in NICE appraisals. If you are interested in comparative effectiveness, single arm studies are difficult to deal with. If you don’t have a control arm to refer to, how do you know what the impact of the intervention is? If you don’t know how effective the intervention is, how can you say whether it is cost-effective?
In this paper, the authors conduct a review into the way this problem has been dealt with during NICE appraisals. They do this by searching through the 489 NICE technology appraisals conducted between 2010 and 2016. The search identified 22 relevant appraisals (4% of the total). The most commonly used way of estimating comparative effectiveness (19 of 22 appraisals) was simulation of a control arm using external data – be that from observational study or a randomised trial. Of these,14 of the appraisals featured naïve comparison across studies, with no attempt made to adjust for potential differences between population groups. The three appraisals that didn’t use external data were reliant upon the use of expert opinion, or the assumption that non-responders in the intervention single-arm study could be used as a proxy for those who would receive the comparator intervention.
Interestingly, the authors find little difference between the proportion of medicines reliant on non-RCT data being approved by NICE (83%), compared to those with RCT data (86%), however; the likelihood of receiving an “optimised” (aka subgroup) approval was substantially higher for medicines with solely non-RCT data (41% vs 19%). These findings demonstrate that NICE do accept models based on single-arm studies – even if more than 75% of the comparative effectiveness estimates these models were based on were reliant upon naïve indirect comparisons, or other less robust methods.
The paper concludes by noting that single-arm studies are becoming more common (50% of the appraisals identified were conducted in 2015-2016), and suggesting that HTA and regulatory bodies should work together, to develop guidance on how to evaluate comparative effectiveness based on single-arm studies.
I thought this paper was great, and it made me reflect on a couple of things. Firstly, the fact that NICE completed such a high volume of appraisals (489) between 2010 and 2016 is extremely impressive – well done NICE. Secondly, should the EMA, or EUnetHTA, play a larger role in providing estimates of comparative effectiveness for single arm studies? Whilst different countries may reasonably make different value judgements about different health outcomes, comparative effectiveness is – at least in theory – a matter of fact, rather than values, so can’t we assess it centrally?
A QALY loss is a QALY loss is a QALY loss: a note on independence of loss aversion from health states. The European Journal of Health Economics [PubMed] Published 18th September 2018
If I told you that you would receive £10 in return for doing some work for me, and then I only paid you £5, how annoyed would you be? What about if I told you I would give you £10 but then gave you £15? How delighted would you be? If you are economically rational then these two impacts (annoyance vs being delighted) should be symmetrical; but, if you are a human, your annoyance in the first scenario would likely outweigh the delight you would experience in the second. This is the basic idea behind Kahneman and Tversky’s seminal work on “loss aversion” – we dislike changes we perceive as losses more than we like equivalent changes we perceive as gains. The second paper in this week’s roundup explores loss aversion in the context of health. Application of loss aversion in health is a really interesting idea, because it calls into question the idea that people value all QALYs equally – perhaps QALYs perceived as losses are valued more highly than QALYs perceived as gains.
In the introduction of this paper, the authors note that existing evidence suggests loss aversion is present for duration of life, and for quality of life, but note that nobody has explored whether loss aversion remains constant if the two elements change together – simply put, when it comes to loss aversion is “a QALY loss a QALY loss a QALY loss”? The authors test this idea via a choice experiment fielded in a sample of 111 Dutch students. In this experiment, the loss aversion of each participant was independently elicited for four EQ-5D-5L health states – ranging from perfect health down to a health state utility value of 0.46.
As you might have guessed from the title of the paper, the authors found that, at the aggregate level, loss aversion was not significantly different between the four health states – albeit with some variation at the individual level. For each health state, perceived losses were weighted around two times as highly as perceived gains.
I enjoyed this paper, and it prompted me to think about the consequences of loss-aversion for health economics more generally. Do health related decision makers treat the outcomes associated with a new technology as a reference-point, and so feel loss aversion when considering not funding it? From a normative perspective, should we accept asymmetry in the valuation of health? Is this simply a behavioural quirk that we should over-ride in our analyses, or should we be conforming to it and granting differential weight to outcomes depending upon whether the recipient perceives it as a gain or a loss?
Advanced therapy medicinal products and health technology assessment principles and practices for value-based and sustainable healthcare. The European Journal of Health Economics [PubMed] Published 18th September 2018
The final paper in this week’s roundup is on “Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products” (ATMPs). According to the European Union Regulation 1394/2007, an ATMP is a medicine which is either (1) a gene therapy, (2) a somatic-cell therapy, (3) a tissue-engineered therapy, or (4) a combination of these approaches. I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of how these medicines work, but in simple terms ATMPs aim to replace, or regenerate, human cells, tissues and organs in order to treat ill health. Whilst ATMPs are thought to have great potential in improving health and providing long-term survival gains, they present a number of challenges for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) bodies.
This paper details a meeting of a panel of experts from the UK, Germany, France and Sweden, who were tasked with identifying and discussing these challenges. The experts identified three key challenges; (1) uncertainty of long-term benefit, and subsequently cost-effectiveness, (2) discount rates, and (3) capturing the broader “value” of these therapies – including the incremental value associated with potentially curative therapies. These three challenges stem from the fact that at the point of HTA, ATMPs are likely to have immature data and the uncertain prospect of long-term benefits. The experts suggest a range of solutions to these problems, including the use of outcomes-based reimbursement schemes, initiating a multi-disciplinary forum to consider different approaches to discounting, and further research into elements of “value” not captured by current HTA processes.
Whilst there is undoubtedly merit to some of these suggestions, I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy about this paper due to its funder – an ATMP manufacturer. Would the authors have written this paper if they hadn’t been paid to by a company with a vested interest in changing HTA systems to suit their agenda? Whilst I don’t doubt the paper was written independently of the company, and don’t mean to cast aspersions on the authors, this does make me question how industry shapes the areas of discourse in our field – even if it doesn’t shape the specific details of that discourse.
Many of the problems raised in this paper are not unique to ATMPs, they apply equally to all interventions with the uncertain prospect of potential cure or long-term benefit (e.g. for therapies for the treatment of early stage cancer, public health interventions or immunotherapies). Science aside, funder aside, what makes ATMPs any different to these prior interventions?
Credits
A great round up. I agree that the ATMP issues raised seems to suggest a singling our for unwarranted special treatment.
It is worth reflecting that we already have one off treatments that promise long term benefit (Hep C drugs, and even common surgery like hip replacement)
We also have treatments like Enzyme replacement therapies that commit to long term funding for long term outcomes and we have examples of conditional outcomes based reimbursement that apply in these circumstances, and ATMP will benefit from this learning where we need commercial terms to address any irresolvable health economic uncertainty
Recent CAR-T agreements for the NHS show that our existing approaches are not a barrier to interventions whose prices reflect the QALYgain, so other manufacturers should take heart that no special rules need apply.