Module 1: What are Value-Based Healthcare and Procurement?

This module traces value-based healthcare from its origins to its present form as a set of purchasing rules. It establishes how VBHC differs from health technology assessment and introduces the framework used throughout the course.

• the Porter and Teisberg value equation and what became of it – the American drift into value-based payment and the very different interpretation adopted by European public health systems
• how VBHC and HTA differ in goal, approach, outcome measure, perspective, cost concept and evidence base – and why HEOR provides the method base for both
• the evidence on implementation – what has worked, what has not, and an honest account of measurement burden and unstable definitions of value
• the arrival of VBHC in procurement rules across the UK and Europe, and what this means for the professionals who generate and commission evidence
• ISPOR’s IMPACT framework – incentives, modelling, patient-centredness, assessment methods, costing and transparency — as the organising structure for this course

Module 2: Outcomes That Matter – Measurement, Standard Sets and Evidence

Value-based healthcare places outcomes in the numerator of value. This module examines how those outcomes are defined, measured and evidenced, and how they differ from the outcome measures on which health technology assessment relies.

• outcomes that matter to patients — ICHOM standard sets, core outcome sets and Patient-Centered Core Impact Sets
• patient-reported outcome and experience measures (PROMs and PREMs) — selection, validation and interpretation
• condition-specific versus generic measurement, and the relationship between outcome measures and health utilities
• registries, routine datasets and hospital episode statistics as the infrastructure of outcome evidence
• what counts as credible evidence of outcome improvement — validation, baselines and the standards that buyers apply

Module 3: Costing the Pathway – Whole Life Cost, Microcosting and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

Value-based decision-making replaces unit price with the cost of delivering care across a pathway or across a product’s whole life. This module teaches you to specify, commission and critique those costings.

• why unit price is the wrong denominator, and what replaces it
• whole life cost — purchase, implementation, operating, servicing and disposal costs, and how they are compared between bidders
• time-driven activity-based costing — the method, the standardisation work now under way and the failure modes to watch for
• micro-costing and statistical cost analysis, and how established HEOR costing techniques complement TDABC
• sourcing cost data in UK and European settings — reference costs, healthcare resource groups, patient-level costing and DRG systems

Module 4: Value-Based Procurement in Europe

European public procurement law has required contracting authorities to award contracts on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender since 2014. This module examines the framework built on that requirement and how it is applied to medical technology.

• Directive 2014/24/EU and the shift from price-based aggregation to value-based award criteria
• the MEAT VBP Framework — its layers, categories and criteria spanning costs, outcomes, stakeholder benefits and broader societal impact
• applying the framework in practice — selecting the criteria relevant to a specific device or consumable and defining value impact metrics for each
• the American CQO Movement and hospital value analysis as a contrasting model
• the framework’s central limitation — it establishes what to measure but not how to calculate it, and why that gap is precisely where HEOR earns its place

Module 5: The National Standard for Value-Based Procurement in England

In June 2026 the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Supply Chain published a standard set of questions and scoring criteria for the purchase of medical technology. This module works through that standard in detail.

• the legal and policy context — the Procurement Act 2023, PPN 002, the NHS Social Value Playbook and the Provider Selection Regime
• the five value domains — social value, efficiency, patient and staff, supply chain and purpose — and the questions contained within each
• weighting and scoring — the minimum combined value weighting, the mandatory social value allocation, the whole life cost cap and formula, and the scoring rubric applied to every response
• how the standard is applied across the procurement cycle — specification, pre-market engagement, evaluation, moderation and post-award measurement
• what the standard asks of suppliers, question by question, and which of those questions are HEOR questions in all but name

Module 6: Evidencing Value Inside a Bid

This is the core practical module. Course members learn to translate an evidence base into the scored, word-limited responses that value-based procurement requires.

• reading the question set analytically — pathway simplification, hospital and community productivity, patient experience and outcomes, health inequalities and measurement
• baselines — agreeing them with the buyer, sourcing them from routine data and making use of the pre-market engagement window
• the compression problem — presenting a model, its assumptions and its uncertainty within a response of 750 to 1,250 words
• avoiding double counting — attributing each benefit to a single question and defending the boundaries between them
• assembling the evidence dossier that sits behind the response, and anticipating how evaluators will validate the claims made

Module 7: Modelling Pathway Change and Defects in Value

HEOR professionals are increasingly asked to model not the adoption of a technology but the redesign of a pathway around it. This module addresses the methods that this different question requires.

• from technology adoption to pathway redesign — choosing perspective, budget holder and time horizon when the intervention is a change in clinical practice
• defects in value — quantifying the cost of avoidable delay, complication, duplication and inequity
• the attribution problem — separating the contribution of a product from the pathway change that surrounds it
• adapting budget impact analysis and return-on-investment modelling to pathway-level questions
• working with clinical improvement collaboratives, registries and national audit programmes as evidence partners

Module 8: Outcome-Based Agreements and the Realisation of Value

A value claim made at tender becomes a commitment to be measured. This final module covers contracting, monitoring and the organisational realities that determine whether promised value is ever realised.

• outcome-based and risk-sharing agreements — structures, precedents and where they have succeeded and failed in European health systems
• contracting for expected benefits — measurement methodology, data access and the accountability problem when outcomes fall short of the promise
• cashable versus notional savings, and the cost-shifting that occurs across organisational boundaries
• integrated care propositions — moving from product-level value claims to portfolio-level and pathway-level ones
• positioning an HEOR function, whether in-house or consulting, to win and deliver value-based work credibly