Innovation: How can we quantify it?

In the HEOR world, you hear a lot about innovation. However, how can we measure innovation? The easiest way is to count the number of new drugs. However, ten “me too” products may be considered less innovative than a single product that cures a disease. An essay by Sukhun Kang in The Incidental Economist conducted…

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Happening in Springfield: New Immigrants Offer Economic Promise, Health System Challenges

When Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance claimed Haitian immigrants had caused infectious-disease rates to “skyrocket” in Springfield, Ohio, local health commissioner Chris Cook checked the records. They showed that in 2023, for example, there were four active tuberculosis cases in Clark County, which includes Springfield, up from three in 2022. HIV cases had risen,…

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Will the UK (finally) increase drug prices?

President Trump’s May 12 Executive Order around Most-Favored-Nation drug pricing argues that countries outside the US need to raise their prices on pharmaceuticals saying that many other countries are “freeloading” and paying less than their share for pharmaceuticals. In response, pharmaceutical companies have increased prices in the UK and even threatened to “walk away” from…

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Ingrid Lindberg, Sobrynth

Ingrid is one of the OGs of customer service in health plans, PBMs and as she insists startups. She and her co-founder Marin Nelson have built Sobrynth–a company that is taking a whole new approach to helping with (primarily) alcohol addiction in the workplace. Despite the rise of mental health solutions, EAP, the focus on…

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Trump to end the IRA ‘pill penalty’

As reported by EndPoints: President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order offering support for a change to the IRA’s “pill penalty,” one of the industry’s long-standing policy priorities that could affect billions of dollars in drug costs under Medicare. The executive order on drug pricing contains a grab-bag of policy proposals, some of…

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