Presentation (CTI)

Problem Statement: Hong Kong’s publicly funded Hospital Authority (HA) must decide which high-cost innovative medicines to list, subsidise or negotiate prices for while preserving equity and sustainability. Its Cost Assessment Panel negotiates with manufacturers, assesses cost-effectiveness and budget impact, and commissions economic evaluations. These decisions require reusable local Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) evidence linking medicine pipelines, disease burden, unmet need, comparative effectiveness, affordability and value.
Description: Horizon Scanning of Chronic Disease Burden and Care Needs to 2030 (SCAN-2030), funded by the University Grants Committee Research Impact Fund, built a decision-ready health technology assessment (HTA) and HEOR platform for Hong Kong’s learning healthcare system. Its Innovative Medicine Database tracks more than 50 pipeline medicines in depression, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and prostate cancer. Territory-wide HA electronic health records generated real-world data (RWD)-based burden forecasts, comparative effectiveness analyses and decision-analytic models for formulary, safety-net, cost-assessment and price-negotiation questions. Depression modelling projected 55,849-57,896 prevalent cases to 2032, with all-cause care costs exceeding US$322.3 million; treatment-resistant or comorbid cases represented fewer than 20% of patients but 31%-54% of costs. Economic modelling of a novel antidepressant identified price negotiation, delivery redesign and dosing optimisation as value levers. IBD forecasts projected age-standardised prevalence reaching 105.88 per 100,000 by 2032. Prostate cancer analyses showed comparable survival between novel hormonal agents and chemotherapy, with lower annual health resource use among novel hormonal agent users. A biosimilar model in 25,099 rheumatoid arthritis patients found biosimilar tumour necrosis factor inhibitors generated higher quality-adjusted life-years and lower lifetime costs than conventional therapy. SCAN-2030 translated HEOR outputs into policy briefs, dashboards, HA-facing briefings, international HTA exchanges and HEOR101 lectures. These outputs informed HA Cost Assessment Panel deliberations and formulary discussions by structuring evidence requirements, quantifying budget consequences, identifying medicines requiring formal economic evaluation and strengthening negotiation preparedness.
Lessons Learned: SCAN-2030 demonstrates HEOR-in-action by moving local evidence generation from one-off studies to reusable decision support for HA. Its workflow identifies technologies, quantifies burden and unmet need, compares effectiveness, models value and affordability, communicates uncertainty and trains users. This approach converted RWD and modelling into practical inputs for prioritisation, safety-net planning, commissioned evaluations and sustainable access decisions, while strengthening local HTA and HEOR capacity.
Stakeholder Perspective: From a government-affiliated payer and HTA system-building perspective, SCAN-2030 supported HA cost assessment, formulary readiness, safety-net planning and sustainable access. Clinicians, researchers and patient-facing stakeholders used the HEOR outputs to interpret unmet need, affordability and value.