Medaffcon and EasyHTA are developing new ways to make health economic assessments faster and more transparent. The results of collaboration will be presented at ISPOR Europe in November.
Medaffcon has been working with the Finnish company EasyHTA for around a year and a half. EasyHTA’s web-based platform is designed to make health economic assessments easier to conduct.
“The idea behind EasyHTA is to make HTA simpler and more transparent. By combining our expertise, we can identify new applications for the platform and determine where this type of tool could add the most value,” says Simo Jääskeläinen, Market Access Lead at Medaffcon.
For EasyHTA, founded in 2025, the collaboration with Medaffcon is an important step towards growth.
“We want to create purpose-built, innovative tools for producing and evaluating health economic analyses. Our collaboration with Medaffcon is helping ensure that new solutions are practical from the very start,” notes EasyHTA founder Eemil Karttunen.
With EasyHTA, users enter the parameters required for a health economic model into a web-based platform, which then performs the modelling. Unlike traditional Excel-based models, the platform allows changes to be made quickly without requiring extensive revisions to the analysis.
For Jääskeläinen, however, speed is only one of the platform’s benefits. Results are presented visually, and multiple stakeholders can review and refine the same analysis. This could, for example, enable a pharmaceutical company and a public authority to work with the same model.
The platform can also be used for purposes beyond formal HTA. Pharmaceutical companies can use it to develop tools that illustrate treatment costs or budget impact for physicians and decision-makers. It could also support mini-HTA processes in hospitals.
The results of a joint project by EasyHTA and Medaffcon will be presented at ISPOR Europe in November.
The project revisited a vaccine assessment previously conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). The evaluation was independently reconstructed using the EasyHTA web-based application and publicly available documentation. The model structure, parameters and assumptions were extracted from the published documentation and entered into the application.
According to Jääskeläinen, the results closely matched those of THL’s original analysis. More importantly, the entire process took only a few weeks. By comparison, vaccine assessments in Finland can currently take up to two years.
“Using publicly available information, we were able to arrive at a result very close to THL’s original analysis. This raises the question of how tools like EasyHTA could help accelerate assessments while making the process more transparent,” Jääskeläinen says.
More efficient health economic modelling could also free up resources within public authorities, leaving more time for evaluating the evidence, engaging with stakeholders and supporting decision-making.
According to Jääskeläinen, companies currently have far fewer opportunities to contribute to vaccine assessments than they do to pharmaceutical assessment processes.
“Dialogue between companies and public authorities on how assessments should be conducted is now an essential part of the process. If we can also make assessments faster and more transparent, both authorities and companies will benefit,” Jääskeläinen concludes.
ISPOR abstract: REPRODUCIBILITY GAPS IN A PUBLISHED HERPES ZOSTER VACCINE ECONOMIC EVALUATION: A STRUCTURED RECONSTRUCTION USING A WEB-BASED HTA APPLICATION
Three new studies based on Medaffcon’s CORE datasets provide fresh insights into cancer care, examining treatment-related time burden, survival in the HUS region, and the relationship between education and cancer survival.
When local evidence is insufficient to support decision-making, research findings and real-world evidence generated elsewhere may help fill the gap.
Finland is currently developing a national assessment and decision-making model for medicines.
Market Access Lead
MSc (Health Sciences), BBA
+358 40 580 0567
simo.jaaskelainen@medaffcon.com
Simo started as the leader of Medaffcon’s Market Access team in November 2024. He is a returnee, as he has also previously worked at Medaffcon. Before returning to Medaffcon, Simo worked in a pharmaceutical company as the head of a Market Access team and has also gained Market Access experience in other pharmaceutical companies. He has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Simo holds a Master’s degree in Health Sciences and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
Simo brings to Medaffcon a strong and versatile background in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in Market Access roles. His strengths include versatility, organizational skills, and the ability to see the bigger picture. In the field of Market Access, Simo does not consider himself an expert in any particular subfield but sees himself as a generalist. He is drawn to the challenges of the industry and the opportunity to find comprehensive solutions that meet the needs of clients.
Ongoing changes in the operating environment require pharmaceutical companies to adapt and adopt new ways of working. Simo believes that the role and importance of Market Access will become even more prominent in a situation where society’s willingness to pay and the needs of the pharmaceutical industry must be aligned in a way that benefits both parties.