Norway Health Tech has been at the forefront of encouraging Norwegian companies to access EXCITE International offerings, with two recently completed Early Technology Reviews for Norweigan ventures SoftOx and for Mode Sensors. Kathrine Myhre and Carl Christian Gilhuus-Moe (CEO and Board Chair of Norway Health Tech, respectively) have been key to successfully forging the relationship with EXCITE International.

Streamlining the Pathway from Innovation to Adoption though an International Collaboration

EXCITE International was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization with a vision to streamline the pathway from innovation to adoption for impactful heath technologies that have the potential to significantly improve patients outcomes and/or health system efficiencies.

This ground-breaking initiative has been made possible by establishing a large international collaboration of strategic stakeholders including payers, health systems, industry, expert end-users, and patients upstream in health technology development. Advice by these stakeholders, provided as early as proof-of-concept and during protocol development for clinical trials pre-regulatory approval, ensures that expectations of all stakeholders are met together with those required by regulators.

Benefits of the EXCITE International Approach

EXCITE International provides two services: Early Technology Review (ETR), usually employed at the proof-of-concept stage of development although can apply to any stage of the lifecycle. EXCITE’s ETR is increasingly being regarded as the starting point for technology evaluation.

The second is full evaluation with protocol development for clinical trials. Protocol development falls under the purview of EXCITE’s international Scientific Collaboration. The main objective of EXCITE’s tailored protocols is to improve the first-pass approval rate for coverage determinations globally by mitigating the risk of first-pass rejection by payers.

While no company can guarantee regulatory approval or market adoption of new health technologies, EXCITE International seeks to ensure that stakeholder input upstream minimizes the likelihood of rejection downstream. EXCITE’s international, collaborative approach accelerates global adoption and reduces the risk of repeated clinical trials or data gathering requested by payers and health systems due to inadequate evidence gathered upstream purely for the purposes of regulatory approval.

EXCITE International is designed to pull rather than push impactful technologies into health systems globally through synchronous approaches. There is no other example of this high-level stakeholder involvement to assist companies in getting to global markets.

Summary

The current approach to health technology development, which sequentially seeks regulatory approval followed by requesting coverage by payers and health systems, is complicated, counter-productive and counter-intuitive. The value-add of EXCITE International is that it aligns companies with important international decision-makers and experts early in the evaluation process (pre-market), working with them across the entire pathway from innovation to global adoption.

EXCITE International regards industry as part of the health system and aligns all stakeholders to pull impactful technologies into markets to improve patient outcomes and/or health system efficiencies. It avoids repeat studies to satisfy multiple health systems to address inadequate or inappropriate evidence developed for regulatory approval, which has a different focus from coverage decision-making.

Dr Les Levin will visit Norway Health Tech on May 24-25 and would love to meet with companies interested in the services Excite and Norway Health Tech will offer. Send an e-mail to Anita if you’d like to schedule a meeting with him!