Cytel Blog

In oncology, many manufacturers go into niche indications, where there are very specific tumors, and then they opt for a single arm trial. This potentially works for regulatory purposes (EMA/FDA). However, if they go to the local HTA authorities (NICE/CADTH), they will have to answer the question on the relative effectiveness of the new product compared to the standard of care in that country, and then its cost-effectiveness. Hence, typically, a manufacturer will identify a publication on a trial or real-world evidence on standard of care, or perhaps collect individual patient level data in clinical practice. Subsequently, it will conduct comparative effectiveness analyses for HTA purposes, a naïve comparison or an unanchored MAIC/STC/PSM of the single arm trial compared with the control arm.

In this two-part blog series, we interview Bart Heeg, Vice President HEOR and Founder at Ingress Health (A Cytel company). Bart provides us insights on the trends in HEOR and explains why Bayesian methods are also important for Health Economics. Read Part 1 here.

Cytel is conducting two pilot projects on head-to-head comparisons using real world data. These projects in oncology and cardiovascular will occur in real time and will take place across our latest webinar series on the topic. The aim of this series is to introduce our audience to head to head to comparison using Real World Data (RWD) while focusing on practical application and results from the pilot projects.

The second webinar from this series was held on July 28, 2020 and outlines the design of the cardiovascular pilot investigation. None of the existing randomized trials of recently developed second-line antihyperglycemic agents can provide adequate information on their comparative effectiveness and safety regarding cardiovascular outcomes. Conducting Target Trials to get information of interest would be costly, difficult to perform, and would take many years to complete. As a result, we need to use observational databases to emulate it. This blog provides a brief on the design of the cardiovascular pilot project. Our team of experts also discussed the data requirements and the data source to be used in the pilot investigation, with the primary challenge focusing on how to assess if data are sufficient for the purposes of trial emulation. Continue reading the blog for a summary of the webinar.

Get access to the webinar recording and download the slides by clicking the button.