Barriers and Enablers to the Adoption of Innovative Methods for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Decision Making

ISSUE: Over the last few decades a number of new and innovative methods have become established in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) – for example Network Meta-Analysis (NMA) for evidence synthesis, and Rank Preserving Structural Failure Time Models (RPSFTM) for treatment switching. However, their acceptance and use has been incremental, especially in comparison to their development. A number of reasons have been suggested for the slow implementation of new methods in HTA, including; lack of understanding, fear of lack of acceptance by HTA agencies, lack of appreciation of the relative merits of new methods, time/personnel/resource constraints, and lack of software development. This panel will explore with the audience barriers and enablers to the adoption of new methods in HTA, drawing on real-world experiences across academic, policy and industry perspectives. OVERVIEW: Keith Abrams will introduce and provide an overview on the use and acceptance of new and novel methods in HTA (10 minutes – including audience participation via the ISPOR app), and the three panellists will then consider three different aspects of methods translation in HTA using illustrative examples (10 minutes each) – Nick Latimer will discuss what evidence is needed to persuade both analysts and HTA decision-makers of the relative merits of new methods; Rhiannon Owen will discuss, from a methodologist and HTA decision-maker’s perspective what drives methodological conservatism and barriers/enablers to adoption, including software; Ursula Becker will finally discuss, from an industry perspective, how use of a unified modelling approach may facilitate the adoption and use of new methods. Keith Abrams will then moderate a discussion involving the audience and panellists on the benefits and barriers of using new and novel methods in HTA, before eliciting the audience’s final views via the ISPOR app.