Open-Source Modeling Builds Trust, Validity, and Rapid-Cycle Learning in Value Assessment

Alexandria, VA — November 23, 2020 — The Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI)—a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the science, practice, and use of value assessment in healthcare—today released its latest Value Blueprints research brief describing the benefits and challenges of employing open-source modeling in value assessment. In open-source models, the full source code, underlying data, and supporting documentation are free to access, review, use, modify, and redistribute with attribution to the original.

“The COVID pandemic has emphasized the importance of rapid-cycle learning and shown how open-source epidemiological modeling is fostering trust as health researchers, economists, and industry leaders find ways to share data and contribute insights without losing a competitive advantage,” said Jennifer Bright, IVI’s Executive Director. “These benefits extend to the mathematical modeling that drives economic value assessments used to guide decisions about how we allocate healthcare resources. Open-source modeling and the principles it represents – collaboration, transparency, rigor – are the bedrock of IVI’s research and modeling. We are very encouraged by the rapidly growing interest in open-source modeling in the value assessment community.”

Value assessment in healthcare is exceedingly complex, IVI’s brief points out, and scientific uncertainty is exacerbated when the structural assumptions aren’t transparent. This makes a model more difficult to replicate or validate, which hinders the ability to build consensus and demonstrate relevance. It also slows the learning cycle and interrupts innovation, defining and paying for the highest value intervention possible.

IVI’s research brief highlights the potential benefits of open-source models, including:

• Building wider trust in models by making them transparent and allowing others to test and validate them;
• Providing the flexibility needed to adapt models to the unique needs of different decision makers; and
• Fostering rapid-cycle development that advances the methods and applications of value assessment.

IVI’s Value Blueprint research brief also discusses challenges that must be addressed to accelerate the acceptance and use of open-source modeling in health economics.

Read the full press release here.

Read the full research brief here.