Payers Expect Clearer Demonstration of Health Technology Benefits
Sweden and Finland are leaders in developing and applying health technology and provide ideal environments for conducting Health Technology Assessments (HTA) for medical devices.
Setting up a Nordic RWE study in Sweden – fast access to patients’ numbers and distribution across Sweden
Sweden’s publicly funded healthcare system and universal access to specialized health care make the data derived from Sweden broadly generalizable, covering diverse populations including different ethnic backgrounds.
The wealth of population-level health and administrative data in Sweden, often reaching nearly 100 percent coverage with high concordance, serves as a valuable resource to pharmaceutical companies for real-world evidence (RWE).
The ability to unambiguously link data from various sources over time using the unique Swedish identity number enhances the richness of datasets. With data ownership spread across national and regional databases, disease-specific quality registries, hospital-level data, biobanks, and researcher-generated databases, Sweden offers abundant opportunities for registry-based RWE studies. In particular, having in-depth hospital-level data is a valuable asset, facilitating the possibility of building well-designed external control arms.
Sweden is a highly dynamic environment for RWE studies in Nordic
Swedish registers also provide information on administrative data such as pricing of pharmaceuticals and medical operations. The readily available data on sick leaves with ICD-10 codes and socioeconomic factors enables exploration of illness-related leave from work, patients’ educational backgrounds, household income, etc.
“Sweden is a highly dynamic environment aiming to continuously keep its position among the top and to develop into a globally leading RWE generation country for pharma market, innovation and research. Therefore, monitoring Sweden’s progress closely is advisable for pharma companies”, says Medaffcon´s Lead RWE epidemiologist Johanna Simin.
An excellent partner for mapping the Swedish market is Medaffcon, a pioneer in RWE and biobank research in Finland. Its expertise now extends to registry research in Sweden.
Medaffcon’s strengths as a partner for RWE studies in Nordic countries:
- Highly experienced health economics, market access, and RWE professionals as experts
- Experts with backgrounds from leading positions in pharmaceutical companies. Excellent understanding of the needs and business perspectives of the pharmaceutical industry in RWE studies
- Experts with broad academic backgrounds and current academic affiliations to continuously strengthen the scientific perspective of RWE projects
- A strong data analysis team dedicated to applying state-of-the-art methods for data analysis in RWE studies
- Experienced professionals evaluating that the data is fit for purpose and suitable for the objectives, facilitating the possibility of drawing meaningful inferences from the obtained results
- Experienced professionals who can strategically guide projects of pharmaceutical companies based on their insights to ensure optimal utilization of data
- High capacity to conduct projects (i.e., timely delivery, start ASAP, etc.)
- The Nordic countries provide an excellent environment to assess market access opportunities for pharma industry. In Sweden and Finland, a pharma company can quickly and smoothly determine the number of patients, the standard of care, the products of competitors in the market, their weaknesses and limitations, as well as where competitors’ products are used.
Fast access for pharma companies to Nordic RWE data
Aggregate-level national real-world evidence (RWE) data in Sweden can be obtained in 1-5 days. Ethical approval is not required.
Includes data for pharma companies on:
For an a priori defined patient population:
- Number of patients
- Gender distribution
- Age distribution
- Place of residence/region (geographical distribution)
- Top 20 diagnoses (in- and outpatient care)
- Top 20 prescription drug usage
- Prescriber information
- Top 20 surgical procedures
Aggregate-level national RWE data in Sweden and Finland can be obtained in 2-4 months.
Includes information for pharma companies on:
- Number of patients
- Demographics (age, sex, ethnicity, BMI, parity, etc.)
- Diagnoses (in- and specialized outpatient care)
- Procedures (in- and specialized outpatient care, day surgery)
- Medications: outpatient prescriptions and in-hospital administered drugs
- A tailored request can be made depending on the client’s needs.
With this information, clients can make decisions about market entry very quickly. Fast access also rapidly provides the information needed for discussions with authorities regarding ongoing market access processes.
