Teresa Amaral - member of the ESMO Council and the ESMO-MCBS Working Group - presented the ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale, and the role of this tool in supporting decision-making on the value of new cancer medicines, as part of a stakeholder panel at the conference From Theory to Practice: Implementing the EU Health Technology Assessment Regulation held on 22 November 2023 in Seville, Spain. “The integration of the ESMO-MCBS within the new processes can further help deliver the HTA Regulation vision: to improve patient access to new cancer medicines,” says Dr Amaral.
The European Union’s (EU) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Regulation, set to enter into application in January 2025, will introduce new EU-wide procedures for assessing the clinical value of new health technologies, including medicines for treating cancer. The conference held in Seville is the third in a series of seven regional stakeholder conferences being held to inform stakeholders about the implementation of the HTA Regulation, with the Seville meeting focussing on stakeholders from Spain, Italy, Malta and Portugal.
When speaking at the conference, Dr Amaral presented the ESMO-MCBS and underlined its role in facilitating improved decision-making regarding the value of anti-cancer therapies, with the goal to promote the accessibility of these therapies and reduce iniquity of access to high value cancer treatments. She explained that, if used as a supportive tool for the new joint HTA processes, the ESMO-MCBS holds great potential to help improve access to innovative cancer therapies, to the benefit of patients with cancer.
Dr Amaral concluded by emphasising ESMO’s willingness to support the implementation of the HTA Regulation across the EU: “As a European society representing 34,000 oncology professionals, ESMO is very supportive of the new HTA processes, and also about the fact that joint assessments will start with medicines for treating cancer. ESMO is in that regard happy to become involved as a consultative partner”.
