Strategic Planning - rheumatoid arthritis
Situation:
- Our client was involved in the development of a new biological response modifier (BRM) treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA affects only one percent of the US population and therefore identifying sufficient patients for analysis is difficult. However, RA treatment and RA-complications are associated with substantial healthcare costs.
- Our client needed strategic information regarding the cause and budgetary impact of recent changes in clinical practice, which had resulted in a major competitor BRM being administered at increasing dosages. BRMs share a similar mode of action but variable dosing, changes in the latter can affect the competitiveness of a treatment.
IMS HEOR Approach:
- Using the PharMetrics Patient-Centric Database (Link to database) information from more than 1,000 patients was used to create a predictive model of factors associated with dose escalation and treatment failure with the competitor BRM.
- Use of descriptive statistics enabled separation of patients according to need for dose escalation.
Outcome:
- The analysis confirmed that the majority of patients receiving the competitor drug had received increased dosage in the past 15 months.
- This dosage increase did not translate into disease-related cost savings with the competitor BRM, and publication of this information raised awareness of the need to monitor the trend toward dose escalation with certain BRMs.
- Our client now had documentation of differences in the pharmacoeconomic profile of current BRMs, allowing them to position their own product more effectively in the market.