Cancer Therapy Value Assessments Need Renewal to Keep Pace with Rapid Scientific Innovation

A new report from the European Institute of Oncology and the Boston Consulting Group calls for the first "value assessment of cancer therapies" to be put in place to help pay for new treatments and reduce the burden on the health care system.

The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, notes that cancer treatments are getting more and more effective as they move into earlier stages of the disease, "with the potential for truly curative approaches giving hope to patients."

But it also notes that "the assessment methodologies developed for the metastatic setting are inappropriate for the early setting as they fail to account for the interdependencies between diagnostics and treatments, nor for the critical importance of toxicity, in particular long-term and the compounding effect of even low-grade toxicity and are over-dependent on overall survival as endpoint."

The report calls for the following seven principles to be used in value assessments: " Increase awareness and further empower patients to participate in value assessments."

"The assessment of cancer treatments needs to consider a wide range of patient-perceived values including whether they have access to the latest medical advances, and how the medicine might impact their long-term wellbeing."

"The economic value of a cancer treatment should be viewed in the context of its potential long-term benefits to the

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