August 2018 - groupH

The forecasting role and forecasting tools as part of a corporate business function, or as part of a commercial consulting project in Pharma, Biotech and Medical Device organisations, continue to evolve. Erik Holzinger (groupH) together with Ben Collins (Boehringer Ingelheim) hosted a round-table discussion during this year’s annual EphMRA 2018 Conference in Basel, during June 26 – 28, to open up a number of key topics to a wider audience, share views and come to a consensus on current best practice.

The group consisted of some very experienced individuals from a broad range of pharma companies and business functions, as well as several people from the agency side, providing for diverse backgrounds and insights into what one individual named “…a very big subject”.

The discussion focussed on four key areas:

Organising the forecasting process across the Pharma organisation – assumption, communication, and consensus
How to communicate strategic forecasts and illustrate uncertainties to senior management – does Monte Carlo simulation have a role here?
Required granularity and scope in forecasting strategic pipeline and in-licensing assets: US + RoW?
Insights into the application of Behavioural Economics to the forecasting process

View a summary of the discussion with key quotes here

Read the handout which set the scene for these four topics here

EphMRA is planning a Forecasting Roundtable No. 2 at our 2019 meeting in Warsaw. Please send any comments you might have on this year’s roundtable and potential ideas for topics to be discussed at future round tables to erik.holzinger@grouph.com We want to hear from you!

The launch of hepatitis C (HCV) drugs such as sofosbuvir or ledipasvir has fostered the question of affordability of novel high budget impact therapies even in countries with high domestic product. European countries have developed a variety of mechanisms to improve affordability of such therapies, including ‘affordability thresholds’, price volume agreements or caps on individual product sales, and special budgets for innovative drugs.

While some of these mechanisms may help limit budget impact, there is still significant progress to be made in the definition and implementation of approaches to ensure affordability, especially in health systems where the growth potential in drug spending and/or in the patient contribution to health insurance are limited.

In this article, Nicolas Touchot, head of groupH’s Market Access practice, reviews how seven countries in Western Europe are approaching the question of affordability of novel therapies and are developing approaches to continue to reward new sciences while limiting budget impact. He also discusses the question of affordability of cost-effective but hugely expensive therapies and the implications for payers and for the pharmaceutical industry.

Click on the following link to read the full article:

Approaches to manage ‘affordability’ of high budget impact medicines in key EU countries