• Uwe Siebert, Beate Jahn, Ursula Rochau, Petra Schnell-Inderst, Agnes Kisser, Theresa Hunger, Gaby Sroczynski, Nikolai Mühlberger, Wolfgang Willenbacher, Simon Schnaiter, Gottfried Endel, Lukas Huber, Guenther Gastl, and Oncotyrol HTA & Outcomes Research Working Group.
• Institute of Public Health, Medical Decision Making and Health Technology Assessment, Department of Public Health and Health Technology Assessment, UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall i.T., Austria; Division of Health Technology Assessment and Bioinformatics, ONCOTYROL - Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine, Innsbruck, Austria; Center for Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; Institute for Technology Assessment and Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: public-health@umit.at.
• Z Evid Fortbild Qual Gesundhwes. 2015 Jan 1; 109 (4-5): 330-40.

BackgroundThe Oncotyrol - Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine is an international and interdisciplinary alliance combining research and commercial competencies to accelerate the development, evaluation and translation of personalized healthcare strategies in cancer. The philosophy of Oncotyrol is to collaborate with relevant stakeholders and advance knowledge "from bench to bedside to population and back". Oncotyrol is funded through the COMET Excellence Program by the Austrian government via the national Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). This article focuses on the role of health technology assessment (HTA) and outcomes research in personalized cancer medicine in the context of Oncotyrol.MethodsOncotyrol, which currently comprises approximately 20 individual projects, has four research areas: Area 1: Biomarker and Drug Target Identification; Area 2: Assay Development and Drug Screening; Area 3: Innovative Therapies; Area 4: Health Technology Assessment and Bioinformatics. Area 4 translates the results from Areas 1 to 3 to populations and society and reports them back to Area 3 to inform clinical studies and guidelines, and to Areas 1 and 2 to guide further research and development.ResultsIn a series of international expert workshops, the Oncotyrol International Expert Task Force for Personalized Cancer Medicine developed the Methodological Framework for Early Health Technology Assessment and Decision Modeling in Cancer and practical guidelines in this field. Further projects included applications in the fields of sequential treatment of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), benefit-harm and cost-effectiveness evaluation of prostate cancer screening, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of multiple cervical cancer screening strategies, and benefits and cost-effectiveness of genomic test-based treatment strategies in breast cancer.ConclusionAn interdisciplinary setting as generated in Oncotyrol provides unique opportunities such as systematically coordinating lab and bench research, product development, clinical studies and decision science/HTA and transparent joint planning of research and development with a partnership of researchers, manufacturers and health policy decision makers. However, generating a joint research and legal framework with numerous partners from different sectors can be challenging, particularly in the starting period of such an endeavor. The journey to translational personalized medicine through multidisciplinary collaborations may still be long and difficult, but it is evident that it must be continued to turn vision into reality.Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

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