IHE receives Alberta Innovates funding to expand health economics services for Alberta SMEs

Health Economics Support for SMEs Across the Health Innovation Cycle

Alberta Innovates is providing $1.95 million over 3 years to the Institute of Health Economics (IHE) through its Health Innovation Platform Partnerships program. This funding is to support health economics service delivery for Alberta’s innovative health companies.

This new funding allows IHE to expand the highly successful Life Sciences SME Commercialization Platform, to strengthen and accelerate Alberta’s competitive advantage. Aligning with Alberta Innovates Accelerating Innovations into CarE (AICE) programs, the platform provides SMEs with economic analyses to define the commercial potential of their technologies, and the business/adoption case for payers.

“Increasingly, promising health solutions require rigorous assessment to support decisions along their commercialization journey, and we hope to support Alberta companies at each step with analysis and guidance. An additional impact of the Platform funding will be the ability to attract outstanding health economics talent to Alberta and to the health technology economic evaluation team at IHE, ”Dr. Christopher McCabe, CEO of the Institute of Health Economics

”Alberta Innovates is pleased to support the Institute of Health Economics. The IHE is uniquely positioned to support our health SME clients in Alberta as they seek to develop the economic evidence they need to gain market traction. Coupled with the unique offerings at Alberta Innovates, this partnership adds significant value to health innovation ecosystem and gets us all one step closer to both economic and health outcomes.” Dr. Raja Mita, Executive Director, Alberta Innovates.  

The full announcement of all the Health Innovation Platform Partnerships is available here: LINK

The IHE SME Health Innovation Platform Partnership page: LINK

Why is health economics important? : Health economics provides critical value at various points across the Health Innovation Cycle. For early innovators, economic analysis can support with an understanding of the commercial potential of technology and the likely ability for technology to provide sufficient value to be attractive to payers. This can inform decisions within the research and R&D program and provide substantial value to SMEs when raising capital, and to the health innovation ecosystem in understanding priorities areas for investment. As health innovations become ready for market, they have a need to generate economic evidence that their technology is cost-effective and a good use of health system resources, in order to receive market access.

For further information

John Sproule, Senior Policy Director, Institute of Health Economics,

Ph: 780-862-1905 

Email: [email protected]

The Institute of Health Economics is an independent, not-for-profit organization with key competencies in health economics, evidence synthesis, health technology assessment, and knowledge transfer/exchange.