CER Daily Newsfeed

Panel: Alternative Funding for Pharmaceuticals Brings Numerous Risks

(9/21, Karen Blum, Pharmacy Practice News) reports “...Alternative funding models may pose significant risks to individual patient access and the health system, said Mr. Einodshofer and co-panelists Corey Belken, PharmD, a national account manager for Genentech, and John Michael O’Brien, PharmD, MPH, the president and CEO of the National Pharmaceutical Council, a health policy research organization. Disadvantages include the following: They may interfere with patients receiving timely treatment since delays in care could lead to disease progression or a decline in health status; Patients with complex health needs may not have access to the right level of specialty support through the alternative funding vendor.” Full

How Patient Apps Can Help Unlock The Benefits Of Real-World Data

(9/21, Kal Patel M.D., MBA, Forbes.com) comments “...Many pharma companies look to companion apps or patient trackers to initiate patients onto new treatments and ensure that they’re adherent and compliant with those regimens...That initial RWD can offer some valuable insights immediately to help optimize digital tools and reveal patient journey pain points. And RWE holds even greater potential, both for improving patients’ lives and pharma’s bottom line. But to gain this untapped potential, brand and RWE teams must not be kept in separate silos—that prevents developing the necessary holistic approach that can drive value and insights for both teams.” Full

A Powerful Methodology to Guide Health Decision-Making

(9/21, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) reports “...[O]bservational studies from the past decade or so suggested that patients who took statins, which are drugs used to treat heart disease, had around half the risk of cancer. However, randomized trials showed that there was no such effect, suggesting that statins should not be used for cancer prevention. To resolve the discrepancy, Dickerman and her colleagues analyzed a U.K. national database of electronic health records and found that using causal inference methods would have resulted in the correct conclusion found in the randomized trials. ‘This was an important case study to show how you can run into major bias simply by applying the wrong analytic methods to observational data,’ she said. ‘It also proposed a better way forward that may serve as a model for investigators who use electronic health records for cancer comparative effectiveness research.’” Full