Andrew Cournoyer Outlines Benefits of Bringing Payers Into Clinical Research Earlier

Andrew Cournoyer, senior vice president and director of the access experience team at Precision AQ, discusses the benefits of introducing payers into clinical trials for new medications in the earlier stages of development to help with proper evaluation.

This transcript has been lightly edited.

Transcript

What are some benefits of having payers involved in clinical research earlier?

I think there's a lot of benefits to having payers involved earlier upfront in the process, and Doug definitely touched upon some of them. It's kind of a 2-pronged approach to it, or 2-pronged benefit package. One, payers have a source of data that's not being tapped into in terms of supporting earlier enrollment options, in terms of identifying patients that could be eligible for enrolling into a trial. And then there's a potential benefit to the payer, if that happens, and the drug is successful, some of the costs are incurred from the manufacturer, but the bigger picture is getting an outcome that's more optimal earlier in the process. It ultimately saves the payer money if the patient gets better sooner because we were able to act more efficiently in the process. So how do we tap into the source of data that payers have on patients to help with earlier enrollment adoption?

So that's one part of it, but then where Doug was going on that kind of the actual design itself and the end points that we're looking at, from the payer lens, we look at a lot of drug categories that are somewhat saturated or commoditized and trying to understand different end points that will drive differentiation for a product. So certain end points that a manufacturer might be looking at might actually just be kind of run of the mill end points that are going to lump that product into the same bucket as everybody else. And ultimately, what we're looking for something that drives differentiation. Now, it could be efficacy, it could be safety, but ultimately what that outcome is, and I think payers have a good sense of what those end points are they're looking for, as well as the meaningfulness of the end point, like the magnitude of change compared to some comparator standard of care placebo. So that ultimately, we can take that and say, "Yes, this is going to benefit the patients, this is going to drive an outcome." Ultimately, it leads to some type of resource use reduction, which drives savings. And that's more of a payer lens, but how we can get involved in that process earlier to help direct the trials that ultimately shape the value proposition of a drug. I think there's some benefit there.