Tag: cost-benefit analysis

Food for Thought: It’s becoming a habit – IQWiG takes approval studies apart

Germany’s Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) this year put out several negative assessments of newly introduced drugs, stating the data did not prove “additional benefit” over existing treatments. In all cases, IQWiG came to the conclusion after deviating from the study design the companies had discussed with the regulators. Instead, IQWiG’s experts divided the patient population into subgroups, saying those subgroups needed different comparator treatments. As a result, these data were either not available or the subgroups were too small to demonstrate statistical significance.

One example is Pfizer’s Xiapex injectable collagenase, approved in early 2011 to treat Dupuytren’s contracture. IQWiG stated that Xiapex does not provide an additional benefit to patients because “it was not possible to derive such additional benefit from the dossier and because the manufacturer did not provide additional or suitable data” to substantiate the claim.

While the manufacturer had compared the Xiapex injection to a surgical treatment, partial fasciectomy (PF), IQWiG for its assessment established six subgroups of patients according to the severity of the disease and chose three different treatment options as comparator: no therapy, percutaneous needle fasciectomy (PNF) and partial fasciectomy (PF). As a result, IQWiG was able to state that Pfizer did not provide evaluable data because the company’s selected comparators differed from IQWiG’s comparators for all but one patient subgroup.

In the case of Eisai’s breast cancer drug Halaven eribulin, IQWiG’s verdict ruled that it could not find evidence for eribulin resulting in a prolonged life expectancy. IQWiG added that Halaven might provide an overall survival benefit for patients for whom taxanes or anthracyclines are no longer an option, but it was unclear whether the benefit was significant. Again, the assessment was made by subdividing the patient group. IQWig defined two subpopulations – one for which an additional anthracycline or taxane treatment was thought to be an option and one for which this was not.

Eisai, in contrast, had compared Halaven to a “Treatment of Physician’s Choice” (TPC) as there are no established national or international treatment guidelines for a standard therapy of women with metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer after failure of two standard chemotherapies including an anthracycline or taxane. This design of Eisai’s EMBRACE was established in discussions with the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA). Being a European study, the participating physicians sometimes opted for therapies not approved in Germany – a reason for IQWiG to not include these data in its assessment. As a result, only 69% of the EMBRACE study patients were regarded as suitable for an assessment.

The same approach was taken in the assessment of Novartis’ Gilenya fingolimod, the first oral treatment for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) approved in 2011. IQWiG once again performed separate assessments of the drug in three groups of patients, choosing three different comparators. Following this operation, IQWiG was able to find data only for one of these subgroups in the study, not enough to establish an additional benefit with sufficient statistical significance. However, one of the comparisons chosen by IQWiG – fingolimod against glatiramer acetate in patients with relapsing/remitting MS – would have been impossible as fingolimod is approved as second-line therapy in this indication while there are no studies of glatiramer acetate differentiating between first-line and second-line treatments.

In all cases, manufacturers may respond to the assessment, after which the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) will review IQWiG’s recommendation before making a final decision.  If G-BA deviates from IQWiG’s negative assessment, the manufacturers have to negotiate the price with the Statutory Health Insurance Funds Association (GKV-Spitzenverband) under the AMNOG pricing scheme. If G-BA agrees with the IQWiG assessment that a drug has no clinical benefit beyond available treatments, the drug will be added to the reference pricing system, which gives the same base price to all comparable drugs in the respective therapeutic group.

Food for Thought: Will IQWiG Go Medtech?

According to a report by Ärztezeitung, Germany’s healthcare cost watchdog IQWiG (Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care) is aiming to also bring the cost-benefit assessment of medical devices and procedures, such as operation techniques and laboratory diagnostics, under the scope of IQWiG and or G-BA, the highest decision-making body of the joint self-government of physicians, dentists, hospitals and health insurance funds in Germany.

Jürgen Windeler, head of IQWiG, told Ärztezeitung there was a “considerable discrepancy in terms of regulatory density” between drugs and all other therapeutic and diagnostic means in medicine. He therefore called for an early benefit assessment of these other methods, too, and suggested to start with medicinal products with the potential for causing a “health risk”.

Food for Thought: In the Health Care Sector, Who Should Choose Which Treatment Is Best?

The healthcare sector is under scrutiny in major developed countries across the globe. Some nations, like the UK and Germany, have already developed strict guidelines to determine the effectiveness of therapeutics and medical technologies, which must undergo comprehensive cost-benefit analyses as a pre-requisite for reimbursement. You can read more information about European regulations, especially German efforts, in our previous articles about the German Drug Reimbursemend Law AMNOG.

While cost-cutting is not as important in the U.S. healthcare system (yet), the emphasis on so-called comparative effectiveness research (CER), which is to assess the most effective treatment options for a patient,  has become undisputed.

An article in Knowledge@Wharton examines the pros and cons of CER efforts worldwide, stating that  “while not specifically designed to address health care costs, CER could ultimately lead to changes in the ways people seek medical treatment, the development of innovative remedies and other trends within the industry that could impact costs.”

Wharton healthcare management professor Scott E. Harrington takes an even more critical view: “The fear is that significant government involvement in CER will give rise to some form of restrictions on access to care [or to] particular treatments based on research studies and bureaucratic decision-making,” he says. “It might not be tied to what people want to have and what they are willing to pay for.”

On the other hand, if properly applied in both the state-funded and private healthcare sector, CER may incentivize biopharmaceutical and medical device companies to invest even more money into first-in-class or best-in-class innovative treatments by granting special patent protection and market access.

Knowledge @Wharton: In the Health Care Sector, Who Should Choose Which Treatment Is Best?, March 2011