Flip (to) the Script: Is It Time to Rethink Health Economic Modeling for HTAs?

ISSUE: There are abundant cases of critical errors in decision-making and reporting resulting from organizations’ dependencies on spreadsheet workbooks for complex data-driven analytics. Spreadsheets easily become bloated and slow, and results often not reproducible. Nevertheless, spreadsheet modeling is highly prevalent in health economic modeling conducted for and evaluated by Pharma and HTA bodies, with accompanying risks to decision-making. Script-based languages such as R provide potential solutions, but have never had strong endorsement from HTAs, and may not yet fully address others’ needs. For some, HTA decisions based on spreadsheet modeling is just fine; others believe in significant benefits that could be derived from script-based approaches. OVERVIEW: This panel will discuss: What issues or concerns have speakers observed in the health economic models developed or reviewed? How do we best mitigate risks in results or decision-making from spreadsheet-induced errors? Does the future lie in script-based modeling (using R or other languages)? What would it take for both HTAs and Pharma to ‘flip to script’?