Economic evaluation of anti-cancer therapies — specifi c approach and challenges of clinical outcomes assessment in oncology

Abstract

The use of QALY (quality adjusted life years) metric to quantify clinical benefi t in oncological settings is limited and
does not correspond with role and importance of QALY introduced with legal changes implemented in Poland in
2012 by Reimbursement Act.
The authors compare diff erent approaches to economic evaluation of anti-cancer therapy in Poland, UK, Canada,
Australia and Germany. The country were considered based on health technology assessment orientated reimbursement
system, specifi c approach applied for anti-cancer or end-of-life therapies and benchmarking in recommendations
issued by Agency of Health Technology Assessment in Poland. Following literature review the key problems
concerning QALY in the evaluation of antineoplastic treatments were defi ned, i.e. EQ-5D is relatively insensitive to
changes in health status of cancer patients, limitations of health utility measurement in cancer, fi xed threshold of
cost-eff ectiveness for all medical technologies regardless of disease specifi city.