Your biweekly update on health economics, policy, and impact
This Bulletin looks at how precision in medicine can come at the cost of evidence, how climate policy puts significantly different prices on the same life, and why capturing carer quality of life in HTA remains a persistent challenge.
HTA's measurement problem: what counts, and who’s counted
Every method in health economics defines, implicitly, what falls inside its scope and what falls outside it: which patients count as representative, whose method sets the value, and whose outcomes the model is built to measure. This month's three outputs are cases where those boundaries are tested.
In precision oncology, our insight on the first EU Joint Clinical Assessment shows what happens when trial evidence for a rare, biomarker-defined population is narrowed furtherto fit the assessment scope: for the only population fully assessed, fewer than one in five trial patients were judged representative. In climate policy, our new ECO-CHICA consensus guidance compareshow health and environmental economists value the same avoided death, finding estimates of the value of a statistical life ranging from $0.6 million to over $13 million depending on the method used. And carer quality of life remains a persistent challenge in HTA. Although it is recognised in principle by some HTA bodies, it is rarely measured consistently in practice - the gapour September masterclass sets out to address.
Where does the EU JCA fall short?
What the first EU JCA reveals about assessing precision oncology
Our new insight examines the EU's first Joint Clinical Assessment, of tovorafenib, for a rare paediatric brain tumour, and what it shows about assessing biomarker-defined therapies under the new EU HTA framework. For the only population fully assessed, fewer than 20% of trial patients were determined to be representative, highlighting how much can fall outside scope as assessments narrow.
What is a life worth in climate policy? It depends on who you ask
Our new ECO-CHICA consensus guidance is the first framework for valuing the health impacts of climate action across disciplines. Reviewing 121 studies, we found the value of a statistical life ranging from $0.6 million to over $13 million depending on the convention used, and the social cost of carbon from $51 to $228 a tonne depending on the model used. This work highlights the need for transparency in how these choices are made.
Carer quality of life in HTA: from measurement to economic models
Informal carers shape patient outcomes directly, yet their own quality of life is rarely measuredconsistently in HTA. Our masterclass on 17 September covers how carer quality of life is defined and measured, the key methodological approaches to generate evidence, and how that evidence can be applied in economic models. Early bird tickets end 16 August.
OHE Annual Lecture 2026 Paying for prevention: the global health financing challenge
Health systems worldwide spend billions treating diseases that could have been prevented. Join Dr Eduardo Banzon, Director of the Health Practice at the Asian Development Bank, at 18:00 BST on 6th October 2026 at The King's Fund to discuss why we continue to underinvest in prevention and what's needed to change it.
