Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI) Launches Groundbreaking Project Allowing Patients, Payers and Providers to Measure Value in Health Care

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI) – a collaboration of academics, patient advocacy organizations, payers, life sciences companies, providers, delivery systems, and other organizations dedicated to finding scientifically credible approaches to measuring value in health care – today launched the IVI Open-Source Value Project, a first-of-its-kind tool to better measure value in health care treatments. The effort kicks off today with the release of an open-source tool focused on measuring value in treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), one of the costliest and most potentially debilitating chronic diseases. This open-source tool establishes a platform for the development of several dynamic, transparent and flexible models that will allow any health care stakeholder to scientifically measure value in health care treatments or services.

The Open Source Value Project is unique in the value assessment space:

1. Each open-source model is fully transparent. IVI will publicly release research methods, assumptions, results, and external reviews to facilitate the evaluation and replication of its work;
2. Each open-source model is freely available and usable. IVI will release code, user guides, model documentation and interactive user interfaces. Anyone is free to download the model to run analyses, make changes to the model, build new models with it, or create new apps or tools; and
3. Each open-source model is developed through a consensus-driven process. IVI will ask for input from stakeholders across the health care system to help ensure that the model reflects the different challenges and needs of each particular audience.

"Health care spending has increased dramatically, and health care systems, patients, providers and payers all need better, more transparent tools to measure value in treatments and services," said Darius Lakdawalla, Executive Director of IVI and Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the University of Southern California. "The IVI Open-Source Value Project works by creating modeling platforms that are flexible enough to account for different stakeholder perspectives and patient populations – and by launching a transparent and collaborative community process for improving, updating, and expanding the models."

"The IVI Open-Source Value Project will give payers and health care systems the ability to make clear, data-based decisions about health care spending, provide key insights to patients and providers making shared value-based decisions, and advance the science of value assessment," added Lakdawalla.

Like the RA model released today, additional robust and flexible platforms for cost-effectiveness modeling are in development for specific diseases. Looking at each disease as a unique clinical entity will allow stakeholders to give more focused input, ultimately providing better evidence and data for how to measure value for each individual disease. Patients were instrumental in the development of the RA model, which is designed to calculate different estimates of value for specific patient characteristics to better capture differences among patients. For example, patient focus groups and reviews by patient researchers helped to define factors in the model that may affect value from a patient's perspective – such as whether a drug is administered orally versus by infusion. The degree to which the RA model will be able to capture patient heterogeneity will improve as new evidence arises and the model becomes informed by clinical use.

"The debate over how to define and measure value in health care is becoming more vigorous, and divergent views are rooted in different assumptions and perspectives about value and cost effectiveness," said Dr. Sam Nussbaum, Chair of the IVI Strategic Advisory Panel and strategic advisor to Epstein, Becker, Green (EBG Advisors). "There is an increasing adoption of value-based approaches to health care delivery and services. Almost 30% of the nation's care delivery is in a value-based arrangement. IVI's primary goal for the Open-Source Value Project is to deliver consensus-based value models that pave the way for more open and productive discussions about how we measure value in health care and make informed and patient-centered decisions that produce better health outcomes recognizing the need to manage overall health care affordability."

IVI will regularly update the RA model based on comments and recommendations provided by interested stakeholders, including providers, patient groups, insurers, policy makers and life sciences companies. Comments can be submitted on the IVI website forum or via e-mail at [email protected] through January 17, 2018. A panel of experts will consider comments and produce recommendations for changes in the next official IVI version of the model, which will be released in Spring of 2018.

About the Innovation and Value Initiative
The Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI) is a collaboration among thought leaders in academia, patient advocacy organizations, payers, life sciences companies, providers, delivery systems, and other organizations. It was created to raise the level of discussion regarding value in health care and find common ground in the approach to measuring and rewarding value. IVI's Strategic Advisory Panel includes experienced leaders from across the health care industry. Their role is to provide advice and ensure the credibility and rigor in the research and policy products and to ensure all parties have a voice in IVI activities.

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SOURCE Innovation and Value Initiative