ISSUE: The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is becoming increasingly influential in drug pricing and reimbursement in the United States. Similarly to many HTA agencies around the world, such as NICE and CADTH, ICER has a program to encourage and empower patient organizations to participate in assessment of health technologies. Indeed, there are a number of examples where the understanding gained from patient organization input has been incorporated into ICER’s drug value assessments. However, questions have been raised about the independence of some patient organization contributions which, if true, could potentially undermine their credibility. Whether it is possible for ICER and other decision-makers, such as insurance providers, to identify and manage potentially problematic conflicts of interest without excluding genuine, valuable patient input remains under debate.

OVERVIEW: Katie Hamilton will moderate and provide an overview of processes to incorporate patient input into health technology assessments, including how this is done in a range of healthcare systems worldwide. <Patient organization panelist> will outline the value that industry support (financial and non-financial) can bring and discuss how patient groups can ensure that such support does not compromise their advocacy efforts and engagement with decision-makers. Yvette Venable will explain how ICER views industry support of patient organizations, and how uncertainty regarding these relationships may reduce the impact of patient organization input, ultimately undermining their advocacy efforts. Finally, <insurance perspective> will explain how insurance providers can consider patient organization evidence in their decision making, including how potential conflicts of interests may be managed. Finally, the group will debate the merits of various approaches to improving how the voices of patients can be fairly incorporated into the drug value assessment and coverage process in the US.