Increasing healthcare costs in inflammatory bowel disease 2007-2020 in Sweden.

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease has been linked to increasing healthcare costs, but longitudinal data on other societal costs are scarce.

Aim: To assess costs, including productivity losses, in patients with prevalent Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) in Sweden between 2007 and 2020.

Methods: We linked data from national registers on all patients with CD or UC and a matched (sex, birthyear, healthcare region and education) reference population.

Preparing for the incoming wave of biosimilars in oncology.

With the imminent arrival of oncology biosimilars in the therapeutic paradigm, stakeholders including a clinician, specialist nurse, patient advocate, regulator and economist provide their perspective on optimising the uptake of these new agents in the treatment of cancer. A number of key messages emerge, based on the discussion that took place during a session of the European Society for Medical Oncology's Annual Congress, ESMO Madrid 2017. First, for successful integration of biosimilars into the global healthcare paradigm, informing and educating the full scope of stakeholders, including clinicians, nurses, pharmacists and patients, is primordial.

To switch from Botox to Dysport in children with CP, a real world, dose conversion, cost-effectiveness study.

Background And Objectives: Children with cerebral palsy (CP) are routinely treated with botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A). Two non dose-equivalent and differently priced products, Botox and Dysport are used. Depending on the conversion one of the products is considerably cheaper.

[The willingness to pay for new drugs is based on ethical principles].

The County Council's board for new therapies (the NT Council) provides recommendations on the use of new drugs based on the ethical platform of priorities, founded by the Swedish parliament. The Council has formulated a policy that interprets the parliamentary ethical platform and operationalize its need and solidarity principle and cost effectiveness principle in four dimensions. The NT Council weighs the health economic evaluation of the drug and the four dimensions: the severity of the condition, the rarity of the condition, the effect size and the data reliability to determine the willingness to pay level and whether the platform allows a recommendation for using of the drug.

Reconciling uncertainty of costs and outcomes with the need for access to orphan medicinal products: a comparative study of managed entry agreements across seven European countries.

Background: National payers across Europe have been increasingly looking into innovative reimbursement approaches - called managed entry agreements (MEAs) - to balance the need to provide rapid access to potentially beneficial orphan medicinal products (OMPs) with the requirements to circumscribe uncertainty, obtain best value for money or to ensure affordability. This study aimed to identify, describe and classify MEAs applied to OMPs by national payers and to analyse their practice in Europe.

Methods: To identify and describe MEAs, national health technology assessments and reimbursement decisions on OMPs across seven European countries were reviewed and their main characteristics extracted.