ICER seeks to provide an independent source of evidence review—free from financial conflicts of interest—to help patients today and in the future by catalyzing a movement toward fair pricing, fair access, and future innovation across the entire US health care system. If you have a question that is not answered below, don’t hesitate to ask.
Founded in 2006 as a research program at Harvard Medical School, ICER today is an independent non-profit research organization that evaluates the evidence on the clinical and economic value of prescription drugs, medical tests, devices, and health system delivery innovations. ICER engages with leading academic scholars and all key stakeholders—including patient groups, clinical experts, life science companies, and insurers—to inform its evidence reviews. All ICER reviews are transparent, rigorous, evidence-based, and available for free to the public. Following formal public comment and revision, each report is subject to public deliberation at meetings of independent appraisal committees, which include medical and patient experts. At these meetings, the “black box” of pricing and coverage is opened up, giving patients and the public a voice in framing the best way to translate evidence and patient perspectives into pricing and insurance coverage policies that will improve patient outcomes while controlling costs.
Hear ICER’s origin story from our Founder, Dr. Steve Pearson.
Funded by grants from non-profit foundations and other unbiased sources, ICER’s value assessments are free from financial conflicts of interest from life science companies and insurers. Given this unique position as an independent and unbiased source of information, ICER has become known as the nation’s drug pricing watchdog.
Life science companies and commercial payers participate in ICER’s Policy Leadership Forum, and their dues contribute to ICER’s annual Policy Summit, which convenes leaders from both industries to discuss broad initiatives that could help deliver fair pricing and fair access across the US pharmaceutical supply chain. In total, contributions from ICER’s Policy Leadership Forum represent less than 20% of ICER’s annual revenue.
Longer term, we anticipate that we will continue to diversify our funding through a mix of philanthropy, as well as research grants and contracts from foundations, federal and state governments, and public health systems.
For more information on our independent funding, click here.
For more information on conflicts of interest, click here.
We work with a wide variety of stakeholders in the US healthcare system. From patient advocacy organizations to clinical experts to manufacturers, we want everyone to comment on ICER’s work so we can make it as relevant as possible.
To learn more about how you can engage with ICER:
- If you are a patient, click here.
- If you are a physician, click here.
- If you are a legislator, click here.
- If you are a manufacturer, click here.
- If you are interested in working at ICER, click here.
No. When drug pricing reflects how well each drug improves patients’ lives, pharmaceutical companies that develop highly effective drugs will still be handsomely rewarded, and the US health system will still continue to incentivize the type of transformational pharmaceutical innovation we all want. The only difference is that Americans will stop paying far too much for the drugs that do far too little.
Across all the drugs ICER has assessed, more than 25% had a US price, net of rebates and discounts, that fell within ICER’s recommended health-benefit price benchmark (HBPB) range. ICER reviewed Lyfgenia and Casgevy, both gene therapies for sickle cell disease, last year. We determined that both therapies likely provided substantial gains in length and quality of life. Our analysis also found that both gene therapies would achieve common thresholds for cost-effectiveness if priced between $1.35M to $2.05M.
Email us at info@icer.org to learn about more case studies where the price aligned with the clinical benefit associated with that health intervention.
Yes.
For drug topics, in addition to receiving recommendations from the public, ICER scans publicly available information and also benefits from a collaboration with IPD Analytics, an independent organization that performs analyses of the emerging drug pipeline for a diverse group of industry stakeholders, including payers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, providers, and wholesalers. IPD provides a tailored report on the drug pipeline on a courtesy basis to ICER but does not prioritize topics for specific ICER assessments.
For non-drug topics, ICER takes recommendations from the public and also solicits suggestions from members of the Advisory Boards of our three independent appraisal committees (CTAF, Midwest CEPAC, and New England CEPAC).
We always strive to align our reports with FDA approval because that’s when pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and doctors across the US health system need to make decisions around pricing, coverage, and prescribing – so that’s when an independent assessment of value is most helpful.
To learn more about our methods & process, click here.
The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is the gold standard for measuring how well all different kinds of medical treatments lengthen and/or improve patients’ lives, and therefore the metric has served as a fundamental component of cost-effectiveness analyses in the US and around the world for more than 30 years. If evidence shows that a treatment helps lengthen life, makes patients feel better, or reduces side effects, these benefits are comprehensively summed up to calculate how many additional QALYs the treatment provides, and this added health benefit is then compared to the added health benefit of other treatments for the same patient population.
ICER does not use the QALY to compare one person to another to recommend who receives treatment. That would be unethical and discriminatory. Instead, ICER uses the QALY to compare one medicine to another to see 1) which option is most effective, and 2) what a fair price would be for all patients who may be able to benefit.
To complement the use of the QALY, ICER’s reports also include a calculation of the Equal Value of Life Years Gained (evLYG), which evenly measures any gains in length of life, regardless of the treatment’s ability to improve patients’ quality of life. In other words, if a treatment adds a year of life to a vulnerable patient population – whether treating individuals with cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, epilepsy, or a severe lifelong disability – that treatment will receive the same evLYGs as a different treatment that adds a year of life for healthier members of the community.
Coupled together, the QALY and the evLYG make what matters most to patients, count the most in determining the fairness of a drug’s price. They encourage drug makers and insurers provide better access to effective medicines we can all afford. And they enable policy makers to take a broader view of cost-effectiveness.
Funded by grants from non-profit foundations and other unbiased sources, ICER’s value assessments are free from financial conflicts of interest from life science companies and insurers. ICER achieves additional transparency and objectivity by ensuring that every employee, academic collaborator, or member of an independent appraisal committee meets our established criteria to avoid any potential conflict of interest that may affect their judgment during an assessment. During our reviews, ICER welcomes participation from outside organizations and individuals that may have financial conflicts of interests – including pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy organizations, clinical experts, and payers – but we require that those entities abide by our established policies for disclosing those potential conflicts.
For our complete policy on conflicts of interest for ICER staff and for external stakeholders, click here.
ICER routinely issues press releases at the following phases during each assessment: topic announcement, draft evidence report, evidence report, and final evidence report.
ICER also issues a weekly newsletter that contains any important ICER updates. Click here to sign up.
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Primarily, pharmaceutical companies and US payers use ICER’s reports as an independent input into their considerations around pricing and coverage. But increasingly, patient advocates, physicians, US legislators, and international health technology assessment organizations are also referencing ICER’s work to better understand how we all can better balance fair pricing and fair access.
While all of ICER’s reports remain in the public domain as downloadable PDFs from our website, ICER recently launched ICER Analytics™, a subscription-based tool that enables frequent users of ICER’s work to more easily customize and implement our findings.