Published Nov 2, 2016

Vienna, Austria—2 November 2016—The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) held an issue panel entitled, Should Health Technology Assessment Guidelines Recommend Inclusion of Future Medical Costs?, at the Society’s 19th Annual European Congress in Vienna, Austria.  The issue panel was moderated by Andrew Briggs, DPhil, MSc, William R, Lindsay Chair of Health Economics and Professor of Health Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. Panelists for the issue panel included:

• Alec Morton, PhD, Professor, Management Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
• Pieter van Baal, PhD, Associate Professor, Institute for Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Ad Antonisse, MSc, Director Economic Affairs (Market Access and Public Affairs), AstraZeneca, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands

This session explored whether health technology assessment (HTA) guidelines should recommend the inclusion of “unrelated future costs” of a medical technology. Recently, Dutch HTA guidelines were changed to recommend inclusion of future, unrelated medical costs. Currently, however, many HTA guidelines exclude future medical costs from an appraisal. For example, the costs of caring for a patient with dementia after preventing death from stroke would not be included in a cost effectiveness analysis of a thrombolysis treatment. The panelists presented the benefits and disadvantages of including future, unrelated costs in HTA guidelines. Alec Morton, PhD provided a summary of theoretical arguments for and against inclusion of future unrelated medical costs. Pieter van Baal, PhD reviewed approaches for how these future costs can be estimated in practice. Ad Antonisse, MSc provided the industry perspective on the issue. Additional information on the ISPOR 19th Annual European Congress can be found here. Released presentations from the congress can be found here. Interested parties can follow news and developments from the conference on social media using the hashtag #ISPORVienna.

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