Finalist
Optimising Outcomes
Summary of work
Multiple myeloma is a cancer arising from plasma cells, characterised by periods of relapse and ultimately death with 5,500 new cases in the UK each year. Less than 50% of patients survive to five years.
It is imperative that myeloma treatment is fully optimised as the benefit of treatment directly correlates with increased overall survival.
REVLIMID® and IMNOVID® are licensed for the treatment of multiple myeloma. NICE recommends REVLIMID® in patients who have failed two prior therapies. Earlier use of REVLIMID® and IMNOVID® was funded via the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) prior to November 2015.
Withdrawal of CDF funding for IMNOVID® resulted in very few funded licensed treatment options for relapsed refractory patients failing REVLIMID®. It became critical to ensure that patients were successfully treated with REVLIMID® until disease progression.
A campaign to optimise treatment outcomes with REVLIMID® was launched with an immediate focus on identifying patients relapsing on REVLIMID® who would benefit from IMNOVID® prior to CDF delisting and a longer-term focus on maintaining patients on REVLIMID® until disease progression through better side-effect management.
Patient retention increased quickly with a 6% improvement by December 2015, equivalent to over 166 years of additional life for myeloma patients in the UK.
Judges’ comments
This work produced great data on treatment dynamics and used it to get results. Celgene showed a detailed understanding of treatment continuation dynamics and the back-to-basics focus achieved results in a short period of time.
