Author: Rick Chapman, PhD, Chief Science Officer, IVI
Policymakers continue to grapple with finding the right approaches to curtailing drug costs and improving health care. Organizations that conduct value and health technology assessment (HTA) are grappling with finding the right approaches, too.
IVI has created a new infographic to illustrate our patient-centered approach to value assessment. Conventional value assessment is typically conducted from the payer perspective, with little attention paid to the impacts healthcare interventions may have on patients and their families in the real world, or to the broader societal impacts.
IVI takes a much broader view. While cost and clinical outcomes are important, they are not the only factors in determining value. IVI works to ensure that value is measured in ways that reflect the impacts that matter most to patients and their families.
We engage patient stakeholders throughout the value assessment process. As the infographic illustrates, there are many factors beyond cost that matter to patients and their caregivers, as well as to the larger society.
For example, IVI is working on an open-source economic model for major depressive disorder (MDD) that explores both pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. Central to constructing IVI’s MDD value model is the systematic identification of life and social impact elements important to individuals living with MDD.
Patient-important value elements were identified and quantified early in the model development process, including several which are often not incorporated into traditional value assessments. By allowing researchers to identify elements that drive value for patients through a rigorous and patient-centric framework, IVI explores how patients trade off value elements, one against the other.
Although the elicitation of patient-important preferences and collection of data on broader societal impacts may be difficult – and add to the time and resources required for value assessments – IVI believes that we must take on these challenges to fulfill the vision of truly patient-centered value assessment.
