Challenge
A pharmaceutical company required a localized cost calculator to support the market access strategy for a new therapy in Portugal. The objective was to demonstrate the economic impact of the new treatment compared with the current standard of care, providing robust, country-specific evidence to support value communication with key healthcare stakeholders.
The original calculator had been developed for a different healthcare setting and incorporated assumptions, resource utilization patterns, and cost inputs that were not representative of the Portuguese National Health Service (NHS). To ensure its relevance for local decision-making, the tool required comprehensive adaptation to the Portuguese healthcare environment.
Solution
Clevidence customized the Microsoft Excel-based cost calculator to accurately reflect the Portuguese healthcare setting, ensuring that all model assumptions, clinical inputs, and cost parameters were aligned with national clinical practice and official Portuguese data sources.
The adaptation included:
· Reviewing the structure and logic of the original economic model;
· Identifying and adapting clinical and resource-use parameters to the Portuguese context;
· Integrating country-specific cost inputs, including treatment acquisition, administration, monitoring, and other relevant healthcare resource costs using official SNS sources;
· Updating the model assumptions based on the latest available evidence and local treatment pathways;
· Performing comprehensive quality assurance, validation, and consistency testing to ensure the robustness and credibility of the model outputs.
The resulting tool was designed to support flexible scenario analyses, enabling users to evaluate the budgetary implications of different treatment assumptions and patient management scenarios.
Impact
The localized cost calculator provided the client with a robust and credible economic tool to support market access discussions in Portugal.
By generating transparent, country-specific cost estimates, the tool strengthened the value proposition of the new therapy, facilitated evidence-based discussions with healthcare decision-makers, and supported reimbursement and market access activities through the communication of the treatment’s economic value within the Portuguese healthcare system.