Approaches to identifying, measuring, and aggregating elements of value

Two general alternative approaches, cost-effectiveness analysis and the therapeutic added value approach, link the pricing and approval of drugs to value. Value as assessed by payers is a function of: benefit less cost, willingness to pay for benefit, and how they handle uncertainty.

This study uses international examples to explore the elements of value that can be included in the assessment of health technologies, approaches to scoring the elements of value and how they can be combined to make a decision.

A range of value elements, measures, and approaches to aggregation are identified across different HTA systems. We show that seemingly arbitrary differences in measurement and aggregation can lead to significantly different outcomes, and argue that the choice of values, measures, and decision-making processes should be informed by the societal values that underpin a health system.

We identify three areas for further research to improve both health system and industry R&D decision making: (i) whether more consistency could be achieved across health systems on the elements of value that matter; (ii) the relative merits of discrete versus continuous measures of value; and (iii) how structured decision making (to aggregate the elements of value) could or should become.