This week, SHEA organised a seminar to discuss the different roles AI is beginning to play in healthcare, with a particular focus on health economics and health technology assessments. SHEA’s Åsa By and the Karolinska Institute’s Linus Jönsson moderated sessions that brought together experts from Swedish healthcare, NICE, academia, and industry.
Key points related to health economics:
🔹 AI opens up opportunities for conducting systematic literature reviews and economic evaluations faster, more affordable, and potentially more comprehensive.
🔹 NICE is evaluating AI’s role in evidence generation for HTAs. They’ve issued a position statement (https://www.nice.org.uk/about/what-we-do/our-research-work/use-of-ai-in-evidence-generation--nice-position-statement), highlighting the importance of careful, transparent, standards-based implementation. NICE’s internal Innovation Lab case applications will explore adaptation and generation of health economic models.
🔹 Pharmaceutical companies are embracing AI across various stages of the life cycle, from identifying specific molecules during the R&D stage, to leveraging previous HTA learnings and crafting global value dossiers.
To conclude, AI has potential to accelerate innovation and patients’ access to new products. However, with great potential comes great responsibility and the experts echoed the need for capable and informed human supervision. Health economists will be essential in guiding not only the development of new AI applications but also in ensuring that these applications complement and assist in delivering relevant evidence, as well as support transparent explanations of how the AI functions.
