PHAR

Partnership for Health Analytic Research

Publications

Multiple PHAR Studies Presented at American Academy of Neurology’s 2021 Annual Meeting

PHAR presented research on transthyretin-mediated (ATTR) amyloidosis and Huntington’s disease (HD) at the virtual 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. PHAR’s Sheila Reiss Reddy, PhD, RPh, Eunice Chang, PhD, and Marian Tarbox, MPP, in partnership with Akcea Therapeutics, Inc., investigated the feasibility of estimating ATTR amyloidosis prevalence and incidence using IBM® MarketScan® Commercial and Medicare databases. They also presented research on the clinical characteristics and resource use patterns among Medicare beneficiaries with ATTR amyloidosis in the years before diagnosis. In addition, PHAR’s Sheila Reiss Reddy, PhD, RPh, and Eunice Chang, PhD, in partnership with Genentech, Inc., presented their findings on healthcare resource use among US Medicare beneficiaries with late-onset HD. The posters for these studies can be found on the PHAR publications page, and the abstracts were published in Neurology’s April 2021 supplement issue. 

PHAR Presents Huntington’s Disease Research at AMCP Annual Meeting 2021

PHAR’s Sheila Reiss Reddy, PhD, RPh, Eunice Chang, PhD, and Caleb Paydar, BS, in conjunction with Genentech, Inc., presented the results of two studies of Huntington’s disease in Medicaid beneficiaries. Their first study compared healthcare utilization and costs among US Medicaid beneficiaries with Huntington’s disease to those without Huntington’s disease. They also presented a study on the burden of illness among US Medicare beneficiaries with late-onset Huntington’s disease. The abstracts were published in the April 2021 supplement issue of the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, and the posters can be found on the PHAR publications page. 

PHAR Presents Recommendations on Treating Primary Immune Thrombocytopenia at ASH 2020 Annual Meeting

Clinical guidance from a PHAR research study on how to taper thrombopoietin receptor agonists (TPO-RAs) in immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) was presented at the 2020 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition. PHAR developed this important guidance with clinical experts using the RAND/UCLA modified Delphi panel process. The consensus statements presented could serve as a guide for clinical care by identifying patients who could safely taper and discontinue TPO-RAs and help to inform the design and development of future clinical trials. The study was also published in the December 2020 issue of Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis. The presentation and manuscript can be found on our publications page.

President of PHAR Urges Researchers Not to be Silent Against COVID

Michael S. Broder, MD, MSHS, president at PHAR, wrote a post on healtheconomics.com about how health economics and outcomes researchers can help defeat COVID-19. He pointed out the important role that HEOR professionals have in not being silent about facts related to COVID-19 and in helping lay people find reliable data sources instead of wading through misinformation. He stressed that health economics and outcomes researchers can help stop the pandemic and save lives by simply stopping misinformation from spreading and sharing facts instead. The post can be found here. 

PHAR’s Interactive Bibliography Book Now Available

Since its establishment in 2004, PHAR has collaborated with many partners in academia and industry on a numerous number of studies. These studies have resulted in over 750 publications, covering nearly 100 different products, 90 health conditions, and more than 30 data sources, and appearing in more than 200 different journals and conferences. PHAR has compiled the publications into an interactive bibliography book titled, Health Services Research Insights. The bibliography book is organized thematically, with each of four main sections devoted to a different broad area of HEOR, then further broken down by type and clinical specialty. The book is available for download now here.

PHAR Presents Various Abstracts and Posters at Virtual ISPOR

Many studies conducted by PHAR were presented at Virtual ISPOR 2020 HEOR: Advancing Evidence to Action and in the journal Value in Health. The topics covered a variety of range, including breast cancer, arthritis, COPD, and many more. One of the studies presented at ISPOR was a secondary data analysis done in partnership with Genentech, Inc., which investigated the healthcare utilization and costs by disease stage in Medicare beneficiaries with Huntington’s disease. This study showed that beneficiaries with late-stage disease had significantly higher healthcare utilization and cost burden compared to those with early- or middle-stage disease. The poster on healthcare utilization and costs as well as the abstracts published in Value in Health can be found on the PHAR publications page.

PHAR and Co-authors Commended for Work to Improve the Care of Patients with IPF

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic interstitial lung disease of unknown cause, with median survival of 3 to 5 years. Establishing a diagnosis of IPF can be challenging, with misdiagnoses and delays commonly reported, which cause delays in treatment that can slow the disease progression. The researchers at PHAR recently published a study in which they used Medicare data to examine patterns of diagnostic respiratory testing and pulmonologist visits that precede IPF diagnosis to investigate potential diagnostic delays. This paper was then highlighted in an editorial in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, where the author “commended [them] for taking on this challenge of examining the real-world temporal relationship between test performance and IPF diagnosis” and commented, “Their findings raise important questions with practical implications for the clinical care of subjects with IPF.” The study and related publications can be found on the PHAR publications page.

PHAR Publishes New Research on Costs in Relapsed Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

A real-world study of lymphoma costs conducted by PHAR in conjunction with Kite, a Gilead Company, was recently published in The Oncologist. This study identified multiple important drivers of cost in the understudied population of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) receiving second-line treatment, such as hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) and chemotherapy. Even though HSCT is currently the only curative therapy for DLBCL, less than one third of patients receiving second-line and subsequent treatment underwent transplant, which indicates potential underuse. The variation in chemotherapy regimens suggested a lack of consensus for best practices. The full text of the article, as well as a related poster, can be accessed on the PHAR website.