Presentation (CTI)

Problem Statement: Traditional health economic models often fail to capture the complex, individualised patient journeys critical for demonstrating the full value of healthcare interventions. Globally, this limitation is faced by healthcare planners involved in chronic conditions requiring long-term management. As a case study, health planners in sub-Saharan Africa needed to evaluate the impact of scaling up HIV pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP/PEP) programmes. Traditional health economic models (e.g., cohort Markov models) were not capturing the full continuum of care or the individualised pathways of patients, making it difficult for stakeholders to see the true value and system-wide effects of expanding prevention services. A new approach was required to inform this decision-making problem with more granular and comprehensive evidence.
Description: A first-of-its-kind web-based patient pathway simulation platform that is accessible on any device—addresses this gap by providing unprecedented detail in modelling individual patients' healthcare journeys, resource utilisation, and outcomes. It employs simulation to model individual patient pathways through complete care continuums. Unlike conventional population-based approaches (e.g., Markov models), this new approach captures patient-specific characteristics, dynamic healthcare system constraints, and complex service interdependencies. We applied it to HIV prevention, modelling a 5-year scenario increasing PrEP and PEP provision from a 20%/80% split to a 50%/50% split. The model incorporated comprehensive resource utilisation data, quantifying impacts across the entire care pathway.
Lessons Learned: The decision support tool (DST) demonstrated 44 primary HIV infections averted over 5 years (versus a baseline of 7), providing clear cost-effectiveness evidence. Key lessons learnt include web-based delivery enhanced stakeholder engagement, enabling non-technical decision-makers to explore scenarios directly. Most importantly, modelling individual patient pathways rather than population averages revealed critical intervention points and more accurate cost projections. This patient-centric approach fundamentally changed how HEOR evidence supports decision-making, demonstrating that pathway-based modelling provides superior insights for healthcare policy and resource allocation.
Stakeholder Perspective: This web-based DST represents a paradigm shift in HEOR methodology, delivering value across all healthcare stakeholders. By simulating individual patient journeys, it enables patients to receive more personalised care, providers to access sophisticated economic evidence without technical barriers, payers to make informed formulary decisions with transparent cost-effectiveness data, and pharmaceutical companies to articulate value propositions with unprecedented granularity for market access. From a multi-stakeholder perspective, the platform's web-based delivery eliminates traditional modelling barriers—no specialised software, significant cost savings, and an intuitive interface—making sophisticated simulation accessible across the healthcare ecosystem. Its rapid customisation for diverse therapeutic areas supports evidence-based decision-making from clinical practice to health policy.