Medical & Scientific Communications 2015 Annual Forum

Recent changes to the reimbursement landscape around the world have elevated the importance of health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) within the pharmaceutical industry. As a result of new demands from payers and population-based decision makers (PBDMs), market access considerations are now seen as integral to drug development from its earliest stages and throughout its life cycle. One example of these changes is the creation of new payment models in the United States that incentivize quality and value rather than quantity of services. In addition to clinical attributes such as safety and efficacy, payers and PBDMs increasingly require evidence supporting the real-world use of a drug, including patient experience, medication adherence, comparative effectiveness, and cost implications. The combination of clinical and real-world attributes represents the value proposition of a new technology. Throughout industry, HEOR is responsible for designing, executing, and disseminating research that provides insight into these questions. The reimbursement dossier is a single document that communicates the value proposition of a new medicine to relevant stakeholders. It is essential for medical communicators working on any HEOR-related work to understand the role of that work within the context of the value proposition. Furthermore, communicators must have a basic understanding of methodologies unique to real-world data generation and economic modeling.