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Are Gene Therapies Financially Sustainable?

Are Gene Therapies Financially Sustainable?

Gene therapies directly address the underlying cause of disease, and many of them offer short-term treatment regimens. As a result, they could bring transformative benefits to patients by halting disease progression and – in some circumstances – offer the prospect of a cure.

Despite the transformative value offered, questions are being raised around whether adopting these technologies into routine clinical care threatens the financial sustainability of health systems in the long term.

In a recently published report, we explore the financial sustainability of gene therapies, and highlight the factors that are likely to influence the financial sustainability of this important medical technology.

What do gene therapies offer patients and health systems?

For patients, there is hope that gene therapies will change the treatment paradigm for chronic conditions. For health systems, the picture is more complex. Gene therapies generate different kinds of value for the health system, depending on the disease they target and existing treatments available.

Gene therapies differ in the value they offer, depending on whether they generate health gain predominantly through an increase in the length of life or the quality of life. Therapies that increase the quality of life of the patient when compared to existing therapies have the potential to generate cost savings (or cost-offsets) for the health system or for wider society.

In the report, we outline three indicative categories of gene therapies to illustrate this further.