Introduction
As the number of available healthcare treatments and therapeutic options has expanded over the past few decades, there has been a growing need to synthesize evidence across multiple sources to determine which interventions are most likely to lead to favorable outcomes over the long term. Health Economics & Outcomes Research (HEOR) addresses these issues, investigating unmet patient needs and treatment gaps and evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of treatments in the real world. As its name implies, HEOR encompasses both health economics, which focuses on measuring and evaluating the results of healthcare interventions, and outcomes research, which examines the effects of healthcare interventions on patients. HEOR brings these two domains together, with the goal of supplying data and insights to improve healthcare decision-making.
By design, since its intent is ultimately to create better patient outcomes, HEOR needs to be patient centric. By this, we mean that the patient’s lived experience, perspective and needs
should be front-of-mind throughout the research process, patients should be more deeply involved within it, and the results should be shared with patient communities in ways that are meaningful and clear. When patients are not involved in research projects, they are less likely to be invested in their outcomes, and researchers are less likely to consider the outcome measures that matter most to patients. If patients’ needs aren’t considered, therapeutics may have intolerable side-effect profiles or methods of administration that detract from their effectiveness in real-world settings, no matter how promising clinical trial results may have been. And when HEOR’s results aren’t communicated with patients in ways that are immediately understandable, patients are unlikely to understand their value or relevance. We also need to recognize that involving patients has the power to improve study and research outcomes by accelerating recruitment and improving decision-making, among other factors.
Today, healthcare in general is moving towards greater patient centricity. This means that more patients are being empowered to take ownership of their own health data. It also means that regulators are attending more closely to patient-reported outcomes (PROs). It is increasingly important to adopt a more patient centric approach within HEOR as well.
There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, patients’ perspectives are changing. In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a watershed moment within the transition to digitally enabled, patient-centric care. With the media spotlight on vaccine development, the public became much more attuned to the importance of health data, spurring greater lay interest in scientific research.
As the number of available healthcare treatments and therapeutic options has expanded over the past few decades, there has been a growing need to synthesize evidence across multiple sources to determine which interventions are most likely to lead to favorable outcomes over the long term. Health Economics & Outcomes Research (HEOR) addresses these issues, investigating unmet patient needs and treatment gaps and evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of treatments in the real world. As its name implies, HEOR encompasses both health economics, which focuses on measuring and evaluating the results of healthcare interventions, and outcomes research, which examines the effects of healthcare interventions on patients. HEOR brings these two domains together, with the goal of supplying data and insights to improve healthcare decision-making.
By design, since its intent is ultimately to create better patient outcomes, HEOR needs to be patient centric. By this, we mean that the patient’s lived experience, perspective and needs should be front-of-mind throughout the research process, patients should be more deeply involved within it, and the results should be shared with patient communities in ways that are meaningful and clear. When patients are not involved in research projects, they are less likely to be invested in their outcomes, and researchers are less likely to consider the outcome measures that matter most to patients. If patients’ needs aren’t considered, therapeutics may have intolerable side-effect profiles or methods of administration that detract from their effectiveness in real-world settings, no matter how promising clinical trial results may have been. And when HEOR’s results aren’t communicated with patients in ways that are immediately understandable, patients are unlikely to understand their value or relevance. We also need to recognize that involving patients has the power to improve study and research outcomes by accelerating recruitment and improving decision-making, among other factors.
Today, healthcare in general is moving towards greater patient centricity. This means that more patients are being empowered to take ownership of their own health data. It also means that regulators are attending more closely to patient-reported outcomes (PROs). It is increasingly important to adopt a more patient centric approach within HEOR as well.
There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, patients’ perspectives are changing. In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a watershed moment within the transition to digitally enabled, patient-centric care. With the media spotlight on vaccine development, the public became much more attuned to the importance of health data, spurring greater lay interest in scientific research.
"Historically, the healthcare sector has been somewhat resistant to change and slow to accommodate new technologies."
SOPHIE TSAI, MD PHYSICIAN AND A SENIOR SCIENTIST, OPEN HEALTH
“Historically, the healthcare sector has been somewhat resistant to change and slow to accommodate new technologies,” says Sophie Tsai, MD, a trained physician and a senior scientist focusing on patient-centered outcomes and patient engagement at OPEN Health. “COVID-19 changed the dynamic and accelerated the technology transformation. This has helped to better support the patients by allowing treatments and clinical trials to be more personalized, mobile, and convenient to the patient. It also seems that the medical community as a whole has become more willing to invest in these technologies because they’ve seen the advantages of utilizing them and — having been forced to adopt them by the pandemic — are now more comfortable with them.”
Along with the rapid digitization of healthcare, the past few years have seen an increase in awareness of the importance of patient centricity among both pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies. The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly recognizing the value of engaging patients during the discovery and development of new therapeutics, especially as treatments become more personalized. With less profit to be found in the commercialization of blockbuster drugs, life sciences companies need to create new operating models to develop the digitally enabled, highly individualized therapies that will comprise the next generation of care.