BRIEF—ICER releases updated Draft Evidence Report on rheumatoid arthritis drugs

The USA’s Institute for Clinical and Economic Review  (ICER) today released an updated  Draft Evidence Report assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

After initially publishing an earlier version of this Draft Evidence Report on September 26, 2019, the ICER’s internal reviewers identified the need to re-evaluate some of the assumptions and calculations in the report to better align our economic modeling with how patients transition between these therapies in the real world.

In its updated model, patients that are failed by first-line treatment now transition to a market basket of targeted immune modulators, instead of palliative care.

Also, because clinical differentiation between these therapies is uncertain over time, the health-technology assessor will now analyze their cost-effectiveness in the first year of use, instead of over a patient’s lifetime.

The interventions of interest for this review are listed below.

With this new update, the  public comment period on this draft report has been extended November 8, 2019.

Based on stakeholder feedback, the ICER may revise key assumptions and findings for its Evidence Report, which will be published on November 26, 2019.