EHDEN, NICE and Health Technology Assessment use of RWD for RWE highlighted at ISPOR 2022, Vienna

EHDEN colleagues were very active at  one of the key Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR)conferences in Europe, The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) European meeting, held in Vienna, 6-9th November 2022, the first in-person in Europe since 2019.

Within the domain of Health Technology Assessment (HTA), our colleagues in work package 2 (WP2) from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, London), led by Dr Dalia Dawoud, Associate Director, Science, Policy and Research Programme. Dalia was a panelist in two issue panels:

  • European payer, regulatory, and HTA perspectives on RWE: closely aligned or far apart?
    • The role of NICE in EHDEN WP2 was discussed, and an emphasis on current use case development in COPD, Oncology and COVID-19. A recent HTA and RWD/RWE workshop  of multiple stakeholders was summarised, and the training support of the EHDEN Academy, and especially the initiation of the HTA learning pathway highlighted.
    • Dalia explored the challenges and developments in utilising RWD for RWE in HTA, inclusive of the work by projects such as HTx, HARMONY, and EHDEN, for instance outlining HTx survey results on the reasons for not using RWD by HTA agencies.

 

 

  • Diving into supporting clinical plausibility in lifetime survival extrapolations; the need for structured tools to guide HTA submissions
    • Initially, Dalia outlined the ‘HTA dilemma’ regarding  internal and external validation, and challenges related to survival outcomes in Oncology
    • In response to the dilemma, the broader context of EHDEN, and NICE’s role in WP2, with the main focus on the Oncology use case, especially the cancer survival dashboard being developed, and further outlined by a poster from Dalia’s colleague, Ravinder Clare, et al (see further below) were explained.

 

 

Ravinder Claire, Senior Analyst, in Dalia’s group, presented a poster, demonstrating an application of RWE for HTA using a federated data network1, outlining analytical use cases in Oncology and COVID-19, and the EHDEN Cancer Data Dashboard. There were very positive responses to the poster and interest in the Dashboard, which we look forward to being launched.

Country-specific, real world survival data for patients receiving the current standard of care could be used to validate trial-based survival extrapolations typically used in HTA. Additionally, they could directly inform baseline outcomes where a treatment only has a single arm trial.

Using data from Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) first, NICE and colleagues are developing a user-friendly dashboard as a “proof of concept” tool allowing HTA agencies and researchers to quickly view natural history data for selected cancers and examine long-term survival projections using different parametric survival functions. The dashboard will allow the visual fit, statistical fit and underlying hazards associated with alternative parametric functions to be compared.

EHDEN is delighted to further the advancement of utilisation of RWD and RWE for HTA purposes, led by our NICE colleagues in WP2, inclusive of use case tools that will provide HTA researchers with relevant and meaningful methods to further support decision-making.

 

  1. Claire R, Elvidge J, et al; Demonstrating the application of real-world evidence for health technology assessment using a federated data network (poster); ISPOR 2022, Vienna