Living drugs

The Promise and Price of Cellular Therapies

The op-ed of The New Yorker provides a clear understanding of the development of CAR-T therapies and the birth of a new class of drugs: the "living drugs". Their implications are huge, from manufacturing to pricing. A must read or listen.

Drug development failure rate

Trends in clinical success rates and therapeutic focus

Clinical failure rates from phase I to drug launch remain at 93%.

If we look at nervous system it is the highest 97%, while the lowest failure is in anti-infectives 84%.

Promoting Healthy Behaviours

Behavioral Economics and Healthy Behaviors
Key Concepts and Current Research

A reference book on the topic that tries to put theory into practice. A work in progress.

PS. From now on, a new Telegram channel ECONSALUT 

Mazzucato speaks about the value of Health

How Do We Measure the Value of Health?

Far away from blackbox medicine

Causal Inference
BIG DATA I REAL WORLD DATA EN L'ANÀLISI DE LA UTILIZACIÓ, SEGURETAT I EFECTIVITAT DE MEDICAMENTS, TECNOLOGIES I INTERVENCIONS SANITÀRIES

The main speech of a next workshop is about causal inference by Miguel Hernan. If you want to have a look at his book, you'll find it here.
Causal inference is one of the main issues that current machine learning methodologies often try to skip. Finally we do need to know the factors, the causes that produce a consequence, a disease. And for example with risk adjustment, it happens the same. The methodology has to provide a clear understanding of the factors for adjustment and weights. Otherwise it would be a blackbox.

On sufficiency

What Is Enough? Sufficiency, Justice, and Health

The capability approach is an alternative to welfarist and extra-welfarist approaches to health economic evaluations. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to put into practice. The chapter 15 of a book sheds some light on the issue.

The approach developed by us is based on an outcome called years of sufficient capability (YSC). Instead of focusing on the absolute gains of capability across a population (i.e., capability maximization), the YSC targets those who fall below a threshold level of sufficient capability, with the aim being to improve capability to sufficient levels for those who are “capability poor

These are the five capabilities of most importance:

Stability— “ability to feel settled and secure”
Attachment— “an ability to have love, friendship, and support”
Autonomy— “an ability to be independent”
Achievement— “an ability to achieve and progress in life”
Enjoyment— “an ability to experience enjoyment and pleasure”

However, at the end, the same question without easy answer:

 How to define a sufficient threshold of capability needs to be considered further. One approach would be to conduct qualitative research using participatory methods to assign a sufficient threshold for a given population.

Unfortunately the proposal of participatory methods and the measurement of capabilities is illusory, at least in my view.

Episode groupers: a crucial tool for population health management

A practical guide to episode groupers for cost-of-illness analysis in health services research

Summary of analytic components in selected episode groupers.

Product	Episode example	Sample conceptual focusa	Number of episodes	Clinical setting	Public episode definition	Linked risk-adjustment approach
3M Patient-focused Episode Software	Not reported.	• Event-based episodes per patient • Cohort-based episodes among patients with a shared condition or characteristic	>500	All	No	3M Clinical Risk Groups
Cave Grouper	Urinary tract infection	• Physician relative efficiency and effectiveness scores • High-cost patient prediction	>500	All	No	CCGroup MediScreen
CMS-BPCI	Urinary tract infection	Inpatient and post-acute care	~50	Inpatient, skilled nursing facility, inpatient rehabilitation facility, long-term care hospital or home health agency	Yes	No
McKinsey & Company	Perinatal	Principal Accountable Provider	>100	All	Yes	Yesb
Optum Symmetry Episode Treatment Groups	Pregnancy, with delivery	• Patient total cost of care by condition categories • Provider profiling	>500	All	Yes	Optum Symmetry Episode Risk Groups
OptumInsight Symmetry Procedure Episode Groups	Radical hysterectomy	• Medical and surgical procedure cost • Provider profiling	~200	All	No	Optum Symmetry Episode Risk Groups
Prometheus Analytics	Pregnancy	Potentially avoidable complications	~100	All	Yes	Prometheus Analytics risk adjustment
Medical Episode Grouper	Cardiac arrhythmias	• Population profiling • Provider profiling	>500	All	No	Disease Staging and Diagnostic Cost Groups

Information as of January 2019 in public documentation reviewed for this article, which comprised peer-reviewed articles and Internet searches for vendor product names; sources as cited in the References list. Readers are encouraged to check those and related sources for more details and updated information on the groupers briefly summarized here.

CMS-BPCI Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services’ Bundled Payments for Care Improvement.

aAs highlighted in public documentation primarily from vendors; this is not an exhaustive list of conceptual orientations among profiled groupers.

bNot detailed in public documentation reviewed for this article in cited sources.