ISSUE: Health Technology Assessments increasingly need to evaluate interventions like vaccines that are accompanied, apart from benefits at the individual/patient level, by external socio-economic benefits. Such externalities are rarely included in “third-party payer perspective” economic evaluations – which risks distorting or underestimating the true value of interventions when such socio-economic benefits are not proportional to QALY benefits. Changes to the current HTA economic evaluation paradigm should be explored, that provide a holistic view of benefits from healthcare interventions and assess them in a fair manner.

OVERVIEW: The panel will debate two potential improvements to the typical HTA paradigm in order to include external benefits in assessment decisions. Following a 5-minute introduction by the Moderator regarding the inefficiencies of the current HTA setting in terms of including external benefits and the probable consequences for resource allocation decisions, each Panelist will advocate, for 15 minutes, in favour of a potential solution to this issue and, specifically, whether a Cost-Benefit Analysis or an Extended Cost-Effectiveness Analysis framework could better replace the third-party perspective CEA that is mostly used today for HTA decisions.

Panelists Perspective: Panelists will use vaccines as case study. JP Sevilla will highlight the spectrum of extended benefits that are associated with vaccines and argue that the optimal way to incorporate such benefits is to use a CBA framework, applicable to all healthcare interventions. Maarten Postma will argue that the current CEA paradigm is firmly rooted in HTA processes and that an evolution (rather than a revolution) is necessary - and this can be achieved through the application of an Extended CEA approach. 25 minutes of discussion will be available, for an issue that is of interest to the full spectrum of potential stakeholders due to the nature of its externalities.