Our Expertise

Trusted Evidence

Curta is led by industry veterans who have helped establish and advance the field of HEOR for more than 30 years. Two of our partners are former ISPOR presidents and have led efforts to establish best practices for HEOR methods. Four of Curta’s seven Partners have academic appointments at the University of Washington Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics (CHOICE) Institute, a premier institution, known globally, for research and training in HEOR. All of Curta’s Partners have served in consulting roles for over a decade, deeply committed to being a strategic, long-term partner to our clients.

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Economic Modeling

Trusted experts in early economic models to inform strategic decision making, sophisticated models to support global HTA submissions and publications, and patient epidemiology and budget-impact models to support real-world decision making.

Real-World Evidence

Trusted experts in real-world evidence generation, from study conception to final product or any piece in between, including database identification, study design, analysis, interpretation, data visualization, and communication.

Evidence Synthesis & Indirect Treatment Comparison

Trusted experts in rapid literature reviews to inform early decision-making as well as global HTA-compliant systematic literature reviews with advanced evidence synthesis methods to support a robust value-based evidence portfolio.

Medicare IRA Evidence Generation & Strategic Support

Trusted experts in Medicare price negotiation and the evidentiary requirements and long-term evidence generation strategy needed for submission to CMS.

HTA Strategy & Support

Trusted experts in HTA in the United States and globally. With our extensive experience with ICER and core focus on economic modeling, evidence synthesis, and RWE, Curta has the proficiency to provide comprehensive HEOR support to meet HTA needs.

United States Payer Tools and Communication

Trusted experts in innovative approaches to effectively communicate HEOR findings in order to simplify decision-making.

Digital Health Technology

Trusted experts in the assessment of digital health technology interventions with a focus on evidence synthesis, economic analysis, and strategic insights.

Real Option Value

Trusted experts in quantifying real option value, which is created when a medical technology extends the life of patients and creates opportunities to benefit from future medical innovations.

Oncology Simulation Model

Trusted experts in Oncology Simulation Models, continuous dynamic Markov models that simulate patient cohorts across many years of disease to holistically characterize the full natural history and anticipated impacts of new interventions.

Economic Modeling

Our Curta partners are long-time leaders in the field of cost modeling, evidenced by hundreds of publications. We pride ourselves on developing Excel-based and open-source coding models that prioritize both rigor and aesthetics. Our economic models maximize the user experience through transparency, flexibility, and approachability, even for the most complex models.

Our core capabilities cover early CEMs to inform strategic decision making, sophisticated CEMs to support global HTA submissions, and patient epidemiology/budget impact models to support real-world decision making. Outside of these traditional economic model types, the thought leadership of Curta's partners has yielded many innovative modeling approaches as well, including mixture cure modeling, real option value, the oncology simulation model, and more. We also offer enhanced support and services for our models post-development, including user guides, training tools, country adaptation support, and novel model usage and reporting capabilities through our innovative technology, Excel Tabs (ET)

Real-World Evidence

Curta employs a multi-disciplinary team of experts in real-world evidence development and data science to guide projects from conceptualization to visualization and dissemination of results. Curta has experience with all of the major retrospective claims databases (eg, MarketScan, Optum, SEER Medicare, etc.). Bringing together our scientific and technical expertise, the Curta staff combined have conducted and/or published over 200 studies using real world data.

  • Patient cohort selection
  • Diagnostic and/or treatment patterns
  • Cost and healthcare resource utilization
  • Disease and treatment burden
  • Survival analysis

Curta's Chief Medical Officer, Scott Ramsey, MD, PhD, oversees our real-world evidence (RWE) research team. In addition to Curta, Dr. Ramsey co-directs the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research, or HICOR. He is considered an expert in the field of RWE, with numerous publications and guidance recommendations. Dr. Ramsey is co-author on ISPOR's 2024 Good Practices Report for Guidance for Using Real-World Data From EHRs in Health Technology Assessments.

Evidence Synthesis & Indirect Treatment Comparison

Curta staff have conducted 50+ SLRs across a wide range of therapeutic areas, including oncology indications, digital health technologies, rare diseases, and many others. Curta has experience with HTA-compliant SLRs of clinical and economic evidence (for example, for NICE or PBAC submission). In addition, Curta conducts many targeted literature reviews and pragmatic reviews to answer specific research questions to inform internal client decision-making. Curta has unique experience with conducting SLRs for digital health technologies through our partnership with the Peterson Health Technology Institute. We leverage cutting-edge software such as NestedKnowledge. If desired, NestedKnowledge can be used as a digital platform to view SLR study results.

  • Pragmatic literature reviews
  • Targeted literature reviews
  • Systematic literature reviews
  • Meta-analysis
  • Network meta-analysis
  • Matching-adjusted indirect treatment comparisons
  • Simulated indirect treatment comparisons

Medicare IRA Evidence Generation & Strategic Support

Curta has extensive experience in United States payer value proposition development and the evolving needs for manufacturers to prepare for Medicare price negotiation.

  • Selection and justification of therapeutic comparators
  • Estimation of price benchmarks, including Medicare net price and statutory ceiling prices
  • Real-world comparative effectiveness, unmet medical need and other evidence requirements
  • Economic analyses

Curta' President, Sean D. Sullivan, is a thought leader in the assessment of evidence to guide United States payer and Health Technology Assessment decision-making. In collaboration with leading health policy experts such as Dr. Inmaculada (Inma) Hernandez, Ph.D., Dr. Sullivan published the first list of drugs potentially targeted by the Medicare IRA, regularly advises manufacturers and other stakeholders about how to prepare for the new legislation and has worked onsite directly with CMS to develop methods to evaluate drugs selected for price negotiation under the Medicare IRA.

HTA Strategy & Support

Curta has developed HTA-ready evidence submissions which have been adapted to every major global HTA (eg, NICE, CAD, PBAC, China National Healthcare Security, etc.). In addition, Curta staff have deep experience with the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER).

Proactive Support

  • Educate on HTA organization, process, and opportunities for engagement
  • Conduct disease burden and competitive landscape assessments
  • Create training and education materials for prior reviews and HTA strategy
  • Plan for an anticipated assessment

Reactive Support

  • Strategize post-treatment selection
  • Analyze HTA materials
  • Organize correspondence with HTA and public communications
  • Critically assess network meta-analysis and cost-effectiveness model

Curta researchers have been involved in over 30 ICER engagements, including serving as principal investigator of the economic evaluation on behalf of ICER for over 20 evaluations through the University of Washington School of Pharmacy and ICER partnership to leverage expertise in economic modeling of pharmaceutical interventions to support ICER’s growing body of work in new drug assessments.

Curta's President, Sean Sullivan, serves on the external advisory board for ICER. Curta Senior Partner, Josh Carlson, leads the University of Washington academic modeling group which collaborates with ICER to conduct economic evaluations as part of ICER’s reviews. Lisa Bloudek and Elizabeth Brouwer previously held positions with the University of Washington as academic collaborators to develop economic models as part of ICER reviews. Noemi Brennan (Fluetsch), Rajshree Pandey, and Kristen Migliaccio-Walle are former employees of ICER, working as part of the research team on multiple evaluations.

United States Payer Tools and Communication

The Curta team are experts at developing tools and materials which convey our study findings clearly and without jargon in order to simplify decisions from the point of view of the end user.

Results can be communicated through:

  • Engaging payer tools
  • Dynamic PowerPoint slides to update calculations on the fly
  • Web-based microsites (protected and unprotected)
  • Promotional claims consistent with FDA CFL
  • Publications
  • White papers

Digital Health Technology

Curta has experience working with Industry partners and United States Health Technology Assessment bodies in the evaluation of digital health interventions. Curta maintains a partnership with the Peterson Health Technology Institute to conduct systematic literature reviews and budget impact analyses of digital health technologies. The first two reports, digital interventions for diabetes, and virtual musculoskeletal care, have been published.

This expertise can be brought to digital health technology developers through:

  • Systematic and targeted reviews for landscape assessment
  • Assessment of value evidence for rigor & scientific credibility
  • Evidence generation planning and execution
  • Cost-effectiveness analysis
  • Budget impact analysis

Real Option Value

Curta Senior Partner, David L. Veenstra, PharmD, PhD, is a pioneer in the assessment of Real Option Value (ROV). ROV is a novel value element that is generated when a medical technology extends the life of patients, thereby creating greater opportunities to benefit from future medical advances. In general, there are two approaches to assessing ROV:

1. ex ante ROV to inform the value for a newly approved drug at the time of launch

  • Simulation modeling to project the likelihood, timing, and effectiveness of future innovations

2. ex post ROV to understand the ROV observed in the real world technologies already on the market

  • RWE analyses to quantify ROV and establish an evidence base for informing the full value based on observed treatment patterns and survival

Oncology Simulation Model

Curta Senior Partner, Brian Bloudek, MS is a pioneer in developing the Oncology Simulation Model (OSM). The OSM is a continuous dynamic Markov model that simulates patient cohorts across many years of disease to develop a reasonable estimation of prevalence and overall survival in a population.

The OSM is:

  • Structurally flexible, meaning its complexity adapts to the level of detail of treatment patterns and desired outputs
  • Simulate sequential treatment pathways to compare survival and other outcomes
  • Able to provide prevalence and survival estimates by treatment history and among subgroups without needing to reprogram the model
  • Allows for all input data to be time-varying, accounting for shifts in treatment patterns and epidemiological values over time

A methods paper describing the OSM was has been published (Bloudek 2022). OSMs have been successfully developed for multiple different oncological diseases such as bladder cancer, peripheral t-cell lymphoma (PTCL), classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The OSM is well-suited to modeling many other cancers and complex treatment pathways.