What is TICER?

TICER (“Test Incremental Cost Effectiveness Ratio”) is a simplified approach for calculating the cost-effectiveness of treatment strategies involving targeted therapies and predictive (companion) biomarkers in cancer. Standard cost-effectiveness (state-transition) models require comprehensive inputs and estimation of transition probabilities between health states. TICER, on the other hand, simplifies the calculation by considering “average patient” scenarios, which require fewer inputs that are readily accessible from the literature. This makes cost-effectiveness calculations available to a broader audience without compromising accuracy, potentially allowing cost-effectiveness feedback at an early stage in biomarker development.

Currently, this provided webtool allows consideration of two different scenarios: 1) biomarker-guided addition of targeted therapy to standard therapy (i.e., HER2-neu guided addition of Trastuzumab to chemotherapy in breast cancer), or 2) biomarker-guided replacement of standard therapy with targeted therapy (ie, ALK-rearrangement-guided replacement of standard therapy with crizotinib in late-stage NSCLC). Outputs include base case incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER), cost-effectiveness acceptability curve, sensitivity analysis, and suggested cost of therapy needed to meet a range of willingness-to-pay thresholds.

Manuscript under review. For questions, please contact Anton Safonov.

Please access the app here: TICER