Tools and methods - Briefings

Access hubs, reimbursement trackers and document repositories are digital systems used by access teams to consolidate, structure and retrieve information on national reimbursement status, health technology assessment outcomes, prices and internal guidance.

Access planning and launch management software platforms give access teams a single view of launch readiness, combining timelines, deliverables, responsibilities and risks across multiple functions and countries.

AI-assisted systematic literature review, evidence automation and dossier tools extend conventional workflows by embedding machine-learning and rules-based automation into search management, screening, data extraction and documentation and by structuring the transfer of evidence into global value dossiers, health technology assessment submissions and payer communication materials.

Analytics dashboards for environmental scans and forecasting bring together structured and unstructured information on payers, competitors, policy, pricing and utilisation to support pharmaceutical access decision-making.

Budget impact models are used to estimate the financial consequences of adopting a new health technology within a defined health system or payer budget.

A tabular comparison of the different types of planning coordination tool available to access professionals

Competitor and portfolio intelligence platforms provide structured, cross-company views of pharmaceutical pipelines, marketed products and commercial performance. They refine the environmental picture generated by policy and horizon scanning tools by focusing on how individual assets and portfolios compare with those of competitors.

Cost-utility models sit at the centre of economic evidence development for access, providing a structured way to compare the additional costs and health benefits of new interventions with those of established alternatives.

Digital and modular value platforms are a distinct category of value communication tools that sit alongside global value dossiers, payer submissions and interactive payer tools. They provide a controlled environment in which evidence, narratives and tools are organised, updated and deployed to support access teams globally and locally.

Epidemiology, burden of disease and patient-flow models form the quantitative foundation of economic evidence in access. They translate fragmented data on disease frequency, severity and care pathways into structured estimates of how many patients are affected, how they move through the health system and what resources they consume.

Global value dossiers and their local adaptations are central instruments for organising and communicating the value proposition of new medicines to payers, acting as internal reference documents that consolidate clinical, economic and contextual evidence, while also providing the structure from which country- or region-specific submissions are derived.

HTA and reimbursement intelligence platforms aggregate health technology assessment outcomes, reimbursement decisions, pricing, regulatory and clinical data across multiple jurisdictions. Their primary function is to give a structured view of how payers have assessed similar products, what evidence has been required, and how coverage and prices have evolved over time.

Integrated access planning tools aim to bring together evidence, pricing, contracting, policy and operational information into a single, coherent planning environment.

Interactive payer tools and objection handlers have emerged as core instruments for translating evidence and value messages into concrete, negotiable terms during discussions with health technology assessment bodies, insurers and provider organisations.

International reference pricing is a method used in most European health systems and in an increasing number of markets globally, in which a country sets or negotiates the price of a medicine by comparing it with prices in a defined basket of other countries.

HTA submission support services focus on translating the global evidence base and value narrative, along with additional local analyses, into formal dossiers for national and regional decision-making bodies

Meta-analysis and indirect comparison methods translate multiple clinical trials into a coherent view of how treatments compare. They sit between systematic literature reviews, which identify and describe the evidence, and economic modelling and value communication, which use the comparative estimates.

Managed entry agreement and risk-sharing design tools have become a central component of contracting and managed access schemes for high-cost and high-uncertainty therapies, allowing manufacturers and payers to move beyond a simple “yes/no” reimbursement decision and instead linking access to conditions on price, volume, or observed clinical performance.

Outcome and contract-performance dashboards are analytical tools that support the implementation and monitoring of managed entry agreements and other managed access schemes.

Parallel distribution is the resale of legitimately authorised medicines from one country to another by independent traders, in parallel to the manufacturer’s own supply routes.