Certara has been steadily expanding its offerings in recent years. By acquiring London-headquartered Analytica Laser, it has now broken into real-world effectiveness prediction and value assessment.
Executives from both sides see synergies between the two firms. With services spanning from discovery to post-marketing phases of drug development, Certara uses modeling and simulations to help increase drugs’ chances at achieving development and regulatory milestones or commercial success.
Similarly, Analytica Laser, an expert in health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), also uses quantitative technologies for services in drug development and market access; in fact, the acquisition brings together about 250 modeling and analytical scientists.
But Analytica Laser brings to the table some novel approaches new to Certara.
Analytica Laser leverages evidence-based methodologies to assess the real-world value of healthcare products, advising drugmakers on pricing and market access strategy. It has developed a proprietary system called the Health Outcomes Performance Estimator (HOPE), which the company touts as “the industry’s first dynamic and versatile tool dedicated to building predictive models for real-world effectiveness.”
Based on Analytica Laser’s epidemiological framework and a Bayesian dynamic modeling engine, the HOPE technology helps translate data from both clinical trials and real-world population health settings into real-world impact predictions—not just for efficacy but cost-effectiveness as well. The “dynamic” feature takes into account complex risk factors like patient and disease characteristics, adherence, prescription patterns and so on. The company says the model can inform and optimize payer negotiations and outcomes-based contracting.
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Achieving regulatory approval is not a guarantee of a drug’s success, and each product must also demonstrate its value to determine formulary and reimbursements, explained Thomas Kerbusch, Ph.D., president of Certara Strategic Consulting Services, in a statement. “The addition of Analytica Laser will allow us to expand our science and technology decision-support system, factoring in HEOR and the crucial issue of real-world value from as early as phase 1, through the product life cycle, to health technology assessment and payer decisions,” he said.
Earlier this year, Certara acquired Berlin-based life sciences data visualization software-as-a-service company BaseCase. Its interactive platform enables biopharma and medtech companies to visualize model results and real-world datasets as presentations in front of payers and healthcare providers.
Now with the additions of Analytica Laser and BaseCase, Certara said it has created “a unique end-to-end market offering, allowing the company to link analysis and advice on safety and efficacy with product effectiveness and patient outcomes, and communicate complex data effectively.”