Should Disease Severity Influence Which Drugs Are Reimbursed?

With colleagues at Canada's Drug Agency (CDA), Karen Lee and Alex Haines, Dr. Shehzad Ali from our department discusses the ongoing debate on:

  • Arguments for incorporating disease severity in drug reimbursement decisions
  • The common approaches HTA agencies use to quantify disease severity
  • How these approaches are operationalized using decision modifiers
  • What is their impact on cost-effectiveness analyses
  • Knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research

The authors emphasize that further research is needed to better understand societal values regarding disease severity and the appropriate weighting of severity in economic evaluations. Current approaches are jurisdiction-specific and may require validation before being applied in other HTA settings.

Original article:

Ali S, Haines A, Lee K. Severity Weighting of Quality-Adjusted Life-Years for Economic Evaluation: What, How, and Where Next?. Canadian Journal of Health Technologies, Vol. 5 No. 1 (2025): January