healthcare

New special theme section in Value in Health on Precision Medicine

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In 2018, I contributed to the publication of a special theme section in Value in Health on assessing the value of clinical genomic testing. You can read a blog post about this publication here, and access the special issue here. My contribution to this was as a member of the Global Economics and Evaluation of Clinical Genomics Sequencing Working Group (GEECS), formerly known as the Population Genomics Health Economists Working Group.

I’m pleased to say that we have just published a second theme section in the same journal, this time focused on evaluation methods for moving precision medicine into practice and policy. This theme section features five papers from the GEECS team and one paper by the ISPOR Special Interest Group on Precision Medicine and Advanced Therapies. As before, the work was chaired by Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD.

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Just published: Value In Health theme section on assessing the value of clinical genomic testing

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Around 12 months ago I joined an exciting new venture: the Population Genomics Health Economists Working Group. This group is made up of health economists and policy researchers from major institutions across the globe who have been at the forefront of the incorporation of genomics into clinical care. The group is chaired by Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD, Director of the Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS) at the University of California. You can find out more about the group members here.

The first key output from this working group has been published today: a themed section in the September issue of Value in Health which addresses the challenges and solutions for assessment of the value of clinical genomic testing.

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Whole genome sequencing costs – a step in the right direction

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It is now well documented that health economic evidence to inform commissioning decisions regarding genomic tests is in short supply. This lack of evidence relates to both costs and health outcomes – there is perhaps an understandable tendency to focus on the issues surrounding the measurement of health outcomes in genomics, but data on costs is equally sparse and the generation of such data is also beset by practical and methodological challenges. That said, in the past twelve months we have started to finally see some good quality data emerging on the costs of whole genome and whole exome sequencing, and a recent paper by Kate Tsiplova and colleagues has made a notable contribution to this literature.

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What are people willing to pay for whole genome sequencing information?

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Given the wide variety of health and non-health outcomes associated with genomic tests, it is perhaps particularly important that the preferences of key stakeholders are considered within the health technology assessment process for these interventions. Indeed, in a paper published last year, Rogowski et al. highlight the importance of ‘preference-based personalization’ in this context. To date, few studies have generated data on preferences for genomic tests. However, a recent publication in Genetics in Medicine by Deborah Marshall and colleagues has attempted to address this gap in the literature.

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Genomics at the 2015 iHEA meeting in Milan

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Apologies for the recent lack of blog posts. It turns out it takes a lot of effort to get a PhD written up alongside other research commitments. Normal service will be resumed very soon. For now, a few quick notes on the International Health Economics Association meeting in Milan which has just concluded. Specifically, this is a quick review of the presentations that I attended which had a link (however tenuous!) to genomics. Continue reading →

Genomics, the data revolution and health economics – the 2015 Astellas Innovation Debate

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Last week I attended the Astellas Innovation Debate (“i-Genes: What the DNA and Data revolutions mean for our health”) at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. This was an interesting event and I was pleased to get the opportunity to make a couple of points during the debate itself. I also wrote about the debate and the wider implications of this revolution from a health economics perspective for the BMJ. You can read this blog here.

Interested readers can watch the entire 2015 debate at http://www.innovationdebate.com/.

Introduction

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Hello. Chances are you’re a health economist, although you might also be a researcher in a different field of healthcare. You might even be a scientist (apologies in advance for any bad science that might follow). Whoever you are, you’re very welcome. The aim of this introductory post is to tell you what you should expect from this blog. Hopefully you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to return, read some more articles and contribute to the growing debate surrounding the application of standard health economic methods in the field of genomics.

This blog is going to assume that you know a little bit about genomics. Specifically, this blog is going to assume that you have at least read the “What are genomic technologies?” section of this blog, a short introduction for a layperson who already has a little bit of science knowledge. Of course, many of you will have a greater knowledge of genetics and genomics than this simple introduction, but this blog is intended to be broadly accessible to stimulate wide debate, so the aim is to keep the genomics jargon to a minimum. This blog is also going to assume that the average reader has some basic knowledge about health economics. Those who don’t could do a lot worse than frequent the excellent “Academic Health Economists’ Blog”.

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