Value in Health Themed Issue Examines the Development and Dissemination of High-Quality, Unbiased Frameworks
Princeton, NJ—February 27, 2017— The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (
ISPOR) announced today the publication of a
special theme issue of its flagship journal,
Value in Health, devoted to methodological, process, and ethical considerations of value assessment frameworks. Published in the February 2017 issue, this special collection of 22 articles addresses approaches and methods to support the definition and use of high-quality frameworks. The special theme issue was developed in conjunction with the
ISPOR Initiative on US Value Assessment Frameworks. The guest editors are Jalpa Doshi, PhD, Director of the Economic Evaluations Unit of the Center for Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and Richard J. Willke, PhD, Chief Science Officer at ISPOR, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA.
Assessing value in health care is not a new concept. Nevertheless, the discussion about using value assessment frameworks to support payers, physicians, and patients in health care decision making has increased dramatically in the United States. “We believe the reports in this themed issue will broaden our thinking on the various perspectives and challenges associated with value assessments,” noted Dr. Doshi.
To provide a general sense of the breadth and depth of the topics addressed in this issue, the articles are grouped in 6 distinct sections:
- Evaluating Existing Value Frameworks. The first section includes 3 papers that evaluate existing value frameworks on a variety of metrics, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
- Addressing Gaps in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. The second section comprises 4 papers that address a diverse set of shortcomings of traditional cost-effectiveness analyses.
- Value and Affordability. The third section contains 3 papers that provide perspectives on how affordability might be judged.
- Incorporating Multiple Dimensions of Value in Decision-Making. This section includes 4 papers that describe value-framework alternatives that may be particularly responsive to varying stakeholder preferences and provide a basis for decision-making.
- Alternative Approaches for Value-Based Assessments. The fifth section consists of 3 papers that describe alternative frameworks for assessing the value of health interventions from the payer perspective, including some that have been implemented in health care systems outside the United States.
- Patient and Other Stakeholder Perspectives on Value. The final section includes 5 commentaries that represent patient, shared-decision making, regulatory, and multi-stakeholder perspectives.
This themed issue presents a broad array of perspectives on value assessments and provides an overview of key issues with existing approaches to inform real-world decision making. “We hope that this themed issue—together with future findings and publications from ISPOR’s Initiative on Value Assessment Frameworks—will ultimately contribute to solutions for supporting robust value-based decision making in health care,” said Dr. Willke.
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