Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR)

Health Economics and Outcomes
Research (HEOR)

Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR)

Led by Director and Principal Andrew Briggs, DPhil, and CEO John Schneider, PhD, AHE researchers and consultants have extensive knowledge and experience in the field of health economics and outcomes research (HEOR). These services include a wide variety of offerings across the product development continuum. In the early stages of development, we provide insights and analysis on potential market size and the design of rigorous economic evaluations, such as clinical studies and cost-effectiveness analysis. In later stages of development, we can offer more in-depth analyses to support expanded market access.

Focus: HEOR Analytics

Traditional HEOR has focused mainly on model building, utility development, and so on. But as data sources have become more nuanced and complex, and product value pathways have become more intricate, there is a need to push the limits of HEOR by applying state-of-the art statistical analyses of data. To address this need, Avalon has developed a practice area within its HEOR capability called HEOR Analytics. These tasks include novel statistical analyses of HEOR data, such as trial data or quality of life data, and novel applications of those analyses to statistical and economic models.

We have extensive experience in advising health care leaders and managers in the following HEOR areas:

  • Evidence Planning & Study Design
  • Conceptual Models
  • Literature Synthesis & Meta-Analysis
  • Data Sourcing, Analysis & Interpretation
  • Economic Modeling: Cost Impact, Cost Effectiveness, & Budget Impact
  • Web-Based Graphical Model User Interfaces
  • Patient-Reported Outcomes & Utilities
  • Market Access & Reimbursement
  • Payer & Purchaser Engagement
  • Value-Attribution Models for combination drugs
  • Network Meta-Analysis, Mixed Treatment Comparisons, & Indirect Treatment Comparisons
  • Pricing Analysis
  • Global & AMCP Value Dossiers
  • HTA Submissions (e.g., NICE)
  • Peer-Reviewed Publications & Communications
  • Medical device total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis
  • Real-world data analysis using large datasets, including Truven, Pharmetrics, Medicare claims data, etc.
  • Support to Value Analysis Teams (VAT) & Value Analysis Committees (VACs) for hospitals & health systems
  • Commercialization Strategy
  • Regulatory Issues
  • Hospital Value Analysis (HVA) of medical devices
  • Clinical research monitoring and study coordination
  • Predictive Analytics & Forecasting
  • Market Research
  • Market Development & Expansion
  • Investor Research & Analysis
  • Benchmarking Reimbursement & Performance Metrics

Examples of HEOR Engagements

  • Developing a full scope of work on economic evidence generation for a pharmaceutical company
  • Advising on commercialization strategies for biotech and medical device companies
  • Building US and Non-US cost impact models for novel medical devices to help with investor communications and market access
  • Building cost effectiveness models for European and US market access
  • Transforming project reports into publishable manuscripts
  • Building budget impact models for payer communications
  • Advising on clinical study protocol design to support economic evidence generation

Andrew Briggs Discusses the Economic Implications of PCSK9 Inhibitors in Clinical Practice:

Related Posts

  • Economic Evaluation and Market Access for Medical Devices in the U.S.: Implications of a U.S. Health Technology Assessment Agency
    June 15, 2021
    Economic Evaluation and Market Access for Medical ...
    The Biden Administration has indicated an intent to explore the creation of a government-operated health technology assessment (HTA) agency to engage in some form of review of biopharmaceuticals and o...

    CONTINUE READING...
  • Telehealth and Telemedicine in the Post-Pandemic Era
    June 18, 2020
    Telehealth and Telemedicine in the Post-Pandemic E...
    In many ways the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic globally was met with sub-optimal levels of preparedness on the part of health care providers and provider systems, such as integrated delivery networ...

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  • Estimating QALY Losses Associates With Deaths in Hospital (COVID-19)
    May 15, 2020
    Moving Beyond 'Lives-Saved' From COVID-19
    This blog covers the presentation given as part of the ISPOR pre-conference plenary session on HEOR in the era of COVID-19 which was held on 14 May 2020.

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  • Economic Cycles and Product Development in Life Sciences
    May 11, 2020
    Economic Cycles and Product Development in Life Sc...
    Economic Cycles and Product Development in Life Sciences May 11, 2020 By John Schneider, PhD and Mirela Sima, MD, MBA The humanistic and economic consequences of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic wi...

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  • Cost Impact Model of a Novel Multi-mRNA Host Response Assay for Diagnosis and Risk Assessment of Acute Respiratory Tract Infections and Sepsis in the Emergency Department
    April 29, 2020
    Cost Impact Model of a Novel Multi-mRNA Host Respo...
    The Avalon team helped Inflammatix, Inc., develop economic evidence for HostDx Sepsis test for the diagnosis of acute infections. A newly released publication describes a cost impact model comparing t...

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  • Electronic Medical Records: Potential Issues in Litigation and Biomedical Research
    April 27, 2020
    Electronic Medical Records: Potential Issues in Li...
    In this blog entry we explore some of the potentially important issues surrounding the role of EMRs in litigation, where the discovery of medical documents and records increasing involves digitally st...

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  • Applications of HEOR Analytics: Covariate-Adjusted Analysis of Phase 3 Clinical Trial Data of Lenvatinib versus Sorafenib in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
    April 17, 2020
    Applications of HEOR Analytics: Covariate-Adjusted...
    In this blog entry we report on a good example of HEOR analytics: our recent study of covariate-adjusted analysis of trial data of lenvatinib versus sorafenib in hepatocellular carcinoma.

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  • COVID-19: Update on Epidemiology & Costs
    April 14, 2020
    COVID-19: Update on Epidemiology & Costs
    We define epidemiology broadly, including an up-to-date review of the key published medical literature on COVID-19. Following that, our discussion of costs focuses in part on the direct medical costs ...

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  • March 13, 2020
    The Coronavirus: How Bad is it, Really?
    By: The Avalon Health Economics Team March 13, 2020 Within a few months we’ve gone from worrying about holiday shopping to worrying about global pandemics and watching the world shut down ar...

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  • How Important is ICER Preparation and Review for U.S. Market Access?
    December 23, 2019
    How Important is ICER Preparation and Review for U...
    John Schneider, PhD and Alexis Doyle, MA Avalon Health Economics December 23, 2019 In recent years in the U.S., there has been an increase in the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) fo...

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  • July 17, 2019
    Using Payer Research to Assess Medical Device Mark...
      This blog is written by  John Schneider, PhD, Sabrina Chmelir, Jacie Cooper, and Shawn Davies, MA Advances in technological innovation and access to capital have recently resulted in a wave o...

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  • June 19, 2019
    Healthcare Use Cases for Blockchain Technology
    This blog was written by John Schneider, PhD, Katherine Dick, Cara Scheibling Recently, the crypto-currency company Bitcoin has been in the news, mainly for its combination of volatility in valuation...

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  • June 10, 2019
    Smoke, Mirrors, and Wild Geese: What Should Be the...
      Andrew Briggs, DPhil Chair of Health Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow UK. Senior Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA. Director and Principa...

    CONTINUE READING...
  • October 1, 2017
    Avalon Health Economics at the 20th Annual Europea...
    In our work in health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) for the life sciences, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, we must maintain close ties with our colleagues and s...

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  • February 22, 2017
    The Value of Biopharmaceutical Innovation in the U...
    There have been some negative reports recently regarding the pricing practices of some pharmaceutical companies. However, it is important to give at least equal consideration to the value derived from...

    CONTINUE READING...
  • December 7, 2016
    The Evolving Landscape of U.S. Payer Coverage Deci...
    Although there are a large number of public and private payers in the U.S., medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers generally focus on two types of payers: (1) Medicare, which is administered ...

    CONTINUE READING...
  • May 31, 2016
    Medical Device Economics and the Health System Pur...
    Hospitals in the U.S. spend an estimated 40% of their annual budgets on supplies, medical devices and equipment alone. According to the American Hospital Association, in 2015 total expenditures ...

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  • March 7, 2016
    Value-Based Payment for Oncology Services
    Cancer care is a large part of overall health care expenditures. Of the approximately 18% of U.S. gross domestic product spent on healthcare, more than 5% is attributed to cancer treatments. Consid...

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  • January 14, 2016
    Why Medical Device Companies Need to Develop Econo...
    Although the U.S. lacks a centralized health technology evaluation agency, as many of the European countries maintain, in recent years there has been considerable pressure to control the rising costs ...

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  • November 16, 2015
    Reference Pricing for in vivo and in vitro Diagnos...
    Prices in health care vary widely even within the same local market and for similar tests and treatments. This reflects differences among providers in their ability and willingness to leverage bargain...

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  • October 13, 2015
    Purchasing Medical Innovation: The Implications fo...
    In an earlier blog, we reviewed the recent book by one of Avalon’s directors, James Robinson. Robinson’s book, entitled “Purchasing Medical Innovation: The Right Technology, for the Right Patient, at ...

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  • August 20, 2015
    Controlling the Costs of Clinical Laboratory Testi...
    Today’s clinical laboratory can do much more than you think. Advances in molecular diagnostics, genetics and biomarkers have ushered in a new era of clinical laboratory capabilities. Along with these ...

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  • May 12, 2015
    The New Era of Cost Control in Healthcare: What Sh...
    In recent years, there has been a small but measurable slowdown in the rate of increase in health expenditures, both here in the U.S. and abroad. The slowdown is largely attributable to a higher lev...

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  • April 28, 2015
    Paying for Specialty Pharmaceuticals: The Case of ...
    According to the American Cancer Society, the financial costs of cancer are high for both the person with cancer and for society as a whole. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimated the 2009 ...

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  • February 28, 2015
    Integration of Novel Diagnostics into Clinical Pra...
    Similar to drug and device markets, a critical part of the success of novel diagnostics is educating providers on clinical and therapeutic utility. However, unlike pharmaceutical drugs, the ordering o...

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  • January 22, 2015
    The State of the Union and Innovation in Molecular...
    During the U.S. “State of the Union” address this past week, President Obama devoted some time to emphasizing the importance of “personalized medicine,” referring to the rapid pace of innovation and t...

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  • August 18, 2014
    The Costs of Antibiotic Resistance and the Need fo...
    After suffering from a nasty cold for more than a few days, many of us think about checking in with our doctor just to be sure that it’s not something worse. The result on those visits is, all too oft...

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  • July 6, 2014
    The Evolving Role of the New Generation of Molecul...
    The high cost of adverse events has been estimated to be at least US$177 billion per year in the U.S., and prescription drugs overall have efficacy only approximately 50% of the time, representing a p...

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  • February 6, 2014
    The Economics of Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis
    According to estimates from the World Health Organization, 8.3 million people worldwide died from cancer and other neoplasms in 2008—about 14% of all deaths. In the same year, the overall costs of can...

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  • January 15, 2014
    Value-Based Purchasing for Hospital Services in th...
    The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program is an incentive-based repayment plan linked to the quality of care hospitals provide to Medicare patients. With...

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  • December 2, 2013
    Reshaping the Clinical Laboratory in the Era of Pa...
    In recent years there has been renewed attention devoted to coordination of medical care services across the continuum of care, particularly in the area of prevention, monitoring, diagnostics, and dis...

    CONTINUE READING...
  • June 20, 2013
    Health Care Costs and Value: An International Pers...
    During the recent debates over the Affordable Care Act (“ACA,” or Obamacare) a commonly raised issue was that U.S. health care does not offer much in the way of “value for money.” The argument, genera...

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  • March 21, 2013
    Using Publicly-Available Health Care Databases to ...
    In the United States, a variety of “usual, customary and reasonable” (UCR) databases are used by health care entities to benchmark their fees (in the case of health care providers) and to create prosp...

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Recent Publications

Challenges for decision-makers when assessing within-class comparative effectiveness: the case of anticoagulation therapy for atrial fibrillation. 2022

Cost impact analysis of novel host-response diagnostic for patients with community-acquired pneumonia in the emergency department. 2022

Beyond Ten-Year Risk: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Statins for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. 2022

Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards 2022 (CHEERS 2022) Statement: Updated Reporting Guidance for Health Economic Evaluations. 2022

Developing a Framework for the Health Technology Assessment of Histology-independent Precision Oncology Therapies. 2021

Reimbursement for genetic variant reinterpretation: five questions payers should ask. 2021

Count the cost of disability caused by COVID-19. 2021

Estimating (quality-adjusted) life-year losses associated with deaths: With application to COVID-19. 2021

Mendelian randomization: estimation of inpatient hospital costs attributable to obesity. 2021

An Attribution of Value Framework for Combination Therapies: Report by the Value Attribution Working Group. 2021

Cost-impact analysis of baroreflex activation therapy in chronic heart failure patients in the United States. 2021

Genetic Variant Reinterpretation: Economic and Population Health Management Challenges. 2021

A Cost-Offset Analysis of the Roxadustat Incident Dialysis-Dependent Global Phase 3 Program: A US Healthcare Perspective. 2021

A Cost-Offset Analysis of the Roxadustat Incident Dialysis-Dependent Global Phase 3 Program: A Canadian Healthcare Perspective. 2021

Cost Impact Model of a Novel Multi-mRNA Host Response Assay for Diagnosis and Risk Assessment of Acute Respiratory Tract Infections and Sepsis in the Emergency Department. 2020

Covariate-adjusted Analysis of the Phase 3 REFLECT Study of Lenvatinib Versus Sorafenib in the Treatment of Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma. 2020

Application of a simple point-of-care test to reduce UK healthcare costs and adverse events in outpatient acute respiratory infections. 2020

Real-world evidence on clinical outcomes in immune thrombocytopenia treated with thrombopoietin receptor agonists. 2020

Comparison of health state utility estimates from instrument-based and vignette-based methods: a case study in kidney disease. 2019

3-month versus 6-month adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with high-risk stage II and III colorectal cancer: 3-year follow-up of the SCOT non-inferiority RCT. 2019

Economic evaluation of passive monitoring technology for seniors. 2019

Cost-impact of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging with Fast-SENC compared to SPECT in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease in the U.S. 2019

Economic evaluation of cardiac magnetic resonance with Fast-SENC in the diagnosis and management of early heart failure. 2019

SCOT: a comparison of cost-effectiveness from a large randomised phase III trial of two durations of adjuvant Oxaliplatin combination chemotherapy for colorectal cancer. 2018

Effect of theophylline as adjunct to inhaled corticosteroids on exacerbations in patients with COPD: a randomized clinical trial. 2018

Behavioural activation versus guided self-help for depression in adults with learning disabilities: the BeatIt RCT. 2018

Comparison between high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T and cardiac troponin I in a large general population cohort. 2018

Long-term weight loss following a randomised controlled trial of a weight management programme for men delivered through professional football clubs: the Football Fans in Training follow-up study. 2018

A decision-analytic model to assess the cost-effectiveness of etelcalcetide vs. cinacalcet. 2018

Enhancing the value of the ASCO value framework. 2018

3 versus 6 months of adjuvant oxaliplatin-fluoropyrimidine combination therapy for colorectal cancer (SCOT): an international, randomised, phase 3, non-inferiority trial. 2018

Rationale and design of the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Coronary Microvascular Angina (CorMicA) stratified medicine clinical trial. 2018

A decision framework for treating chronic immune thrombocytopenia with thrombopoietin receptor agonists. 2018

High-Sensitivity Troponin T and Incident Heart Failure in Older Men: British Regional Heart Study. 2018

Highest risk-highest benefit’ strategy: a pragmatic, cost-effective approach to targeting use of PCSK9 inhibitor therapies. 2018

Long-term weight loss trajectories following participation in a randomised controlled trial of a weight management programme for men delivered through professional football clubs: A longitudinal cohort study and economic evaluation. 2018

The feasibility of a randomised-controlled trial to compare the cost-effectiveness of palliative cardiology or usual care in people with advanced heart failure: two exploratory prospective cohorts. 2018

Cost-effectiveness of sacubitril/valsartan in the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. 2018

Cost-effectiveness of umeclidinium compared with tiotropium and glycopyrronium as monotherapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a UK perspective. 2018

EQ-5D-5L: Smaller steps but a major step change? 2018.

Estimating the Long-Term Outcomes Associated With ImmunoOncology Therapies: Challenges and Approaches for Overall Survival Extrapolations. 2018

Economic evaluation of procalcitonin-guided antibiotic therapy in acute respiratory infections: a Chinese hospital system perspective. 2017

Avalon Health Economics LLC