Perspectives

Program of insights work to shape a distinctive market position and impactful healthcare professional (HCP)-directed communications to shift beliefs, drive launch uptake and build brand loyalty

COVID-19 has intensified many existing trends. The lessons learned and applied under this pressure should enhance decision making in the UK – and perhaps these principles might be applied in other countries.

Pharmaceutical companies guaranteeing results and paying for failures? Payers paying more if a cancer patient has a shorter lifespan on a specific drug? Pharma guaranteeing the control of cholesterol?

The first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies launched 3 years ago, promising dramatic benefits. Patients now await the second cluster – including the novel technologies KTE-X19, lisocabtagene maraleucel, idecabtagene vicleucel and ciltacabtagene autoleucel – alongside the launch of KYMRIAH® and YESCARTA® into earlier lines of therapy.1 As consultants engaged with the first, we remember the vista of uncertainty: how do we robustly demonstrate to health technology assessment (HTA) bodies the expected value of these expensive interventions with only short-term, single-arm data as supportive evidence, the kind of data such bodies are typically so skeptical of? To paraphrase a team member, we were to ‘go where no one has gone before’.a As the second cluster approaches launch, we can claim no such excuse. Join us as we learn from past reviews from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), draw four implications for the future, and then pose four further questions for your consideration.