Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: The National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE), Ireland, runs a Patient Organisation (PO) submission process which enables patients, families and carers to communicate their experiences directly to the national drug-reimbursement decision maker. These PO submissions inform the payer decision. In 2024, a PO submission was made for 43% (13 of 23) of Health Technology Assessments (HTAs) completed by the NCPE. The NCPE provides initiatives aimed at improving engagement with POs, including an annual, educational webinar. This webinar provides insights on HTA, the drug reimbursement process and guidance on how to make impactful PO submissions. The most recent webinar was in April 2025.
METHODS: POs were invited to register through email invitations, the NCPE website and social media. At the start and end of the webinar, attendees completed a 5-point Likert scale poll to capture their level of confidence that a PO submission would inform the drug-reimbursement decision-making process. Responses ranged from “Not confident at all” to “Completely confident”. The results at the start and end of the webinar were compared using a paired Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
RESULTS: Representatives from 34 POs attended the webinar. Almost half of attendees (16 of 33, 48%) had never made a submission. A total of 24 attendees completed both Likert scale polls. At the start and end of the webinar, 6 of 24 attendees (25%) and 11 of 24 attendees (46%), respectively, felt fairly/completely confident that a PO submission would inform the drug-reimbursement decision. Overall, levels of confidence improved between the start and end of the webinar (2-sided p=0.0476).
CONCLUSIONS: We successfully engaged with POs, including many that had not previously made a submission to the NCPE. We saw an improvement in confidence levels that a PO submission would inform the drug-reimbursement decision in Ireland. We will continue to run initiatives to improve engagement with POs at the NCPE.