Determining the value of the abdominal core health quality collaborative to support regulatory decisions.

PURPOSE: The study objective is to document value created by real-world evidence from the Abdominal Core Health Quality Collaborative (ACHQC) for regulatory decisions. The ACHQC is a national effort that generates data on hernia repair techniques and devices.

METHODS: Two retrospective cohort evaluations compared cost and time of ACHQC analyses to traditional postmarket studies. The first analysis was based on 25 reports submitted to the European Medicines Agency of 20 mesh products for post-market surveillance. A second analysis supported label expansion submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health for a robotic-assisted surgery device to include ventral hernia repair. Estimated costs of counterfactual studies, defined as studies that might have been done if the registry had not been available, were derived from a model described in the literature. Return on investment, percentage of cost savings, and time savings were calculated.

RESULTS: 45,010 patients contributed to the two analyses. The cost and time differences between individual 25 ACHQC analyses (41,112 patients) and traditional studies ranged from $1.3 to $2.2 million and from 3 to 4.8 years, both favoring use of the ACHQC. In the second label expansion analysis (3,898 patients), the estimated return on investment ranged from 11 to 461% with time savings of 5.1 years favoring use of the ACHQC.

CONCLUSIONS: Compared to traditional postmarket studies, use of ACHQC data can result in cost and time savings when used for appropriate regulatory decisions in light of key assumptions.