ISSUE:

Health equity is a fundamental healthcare goals as endorsed by the World Health Organization. The mechanism for treatments to enter the market (i.e., health technology assessments [HTA]) rarely or inconsistently consider sex, racial or other socioeconomic factors. In part, this already starts from clinical trial design limitations that prevent accurately assessing disparities in subpopulations that may benefit the most from treatment innovation. Quality real-world evidence (RWE) can provide additional insight on these disparities and the value of treatments to address them. Despite growing HTA interest to accept RWE, biases and lack of confidence in its findings have long been barriers to HTA acceptance. The sparsity of relevant RWE on health disparities raises the issue of data transferability from areas outside the local area of interest.

OVERVIEW:

HTA traditionally relied on comparative and/or cost-effectiveness analysis to evaluate new therapies evaluation. The interest in using RWE to inform clinical and economic estimates in HTAs is increasing; however, mistrust and focus on biases have overshadowed the potential RWE has to unravel larger issues such as health disparities. This panel will discuss the potential of RWE to address the inclusion of health disparities in HTAs submissions and debate whether this evidence can be reliably transferred from one jurisdiction to another knowing that these issues are locally dependent. Would RWE transferability be the major concern and potential barrier for HTA bodies when deciding whether treatments could address underlying health disparities? This panel will debate from consultancy, industry, and epidemiological perspectives (15 min each) if the existing RWE methodologies can overcome transferability concerns and will provide case studies transferring sex, socioeconomic, and racial disparities data across different settings. A 10-minute interactive discussion will follow including using real time polling questions. Stakeholders (industry, researchers, and HTA body) will benefit from this panel.