PenTAG Consulting

Small to medium-sized pharmaceutical and medical device companies often face challenges entering the market as they lack experience with the purpose, function, and methods of health technology assessment. Established companies and consultancies acting for industry may also benefit from regular and enhanced staff training to ensure that they can meet the demands of a competitive HTA market. PenTAG with its blend of private sector experience and academic expertise – including assisting NICE appraising products for the past 20 years – is uniquely positioned to help. We offer comprehensive training on HTA submissions by covering essential aspects such as:

• Understanding and engaging with NICE HTA processes for manufacturers, patient organisations and other stakeholders 
• How to put together an excellent HTA submission
• How to develop a robust evidence base for medical devices and diagnostics
• World-class literature searching using databases, search filters and grey literature sources
• Critical appraisal of evidence and its use in HTA
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• Statistical analysis of trial and real-world data
• Economic evaluation
• Decision modelling
• Structured expert elicitation

PenTAG offers various courses, including short one- or two-day workshops for specific clients. We also have the capacity to deliver more intense 6–8-week module-style courses, leveraging the significant teaching experience of members of PenTAG and wider departments in the University of Exeter.

PenTAG’s mission is to assist local and international payers, small companies, charities, and start-ups in navigating HTA processes to secure optimal outcomes. 

We are also happy to work with larger companies on non-product specific projects in order to maintain our independence to conduct our work with NICE.

Our team can deliver pivotal HTA projects including: 

• HTA evidence generation and submission dossier production for start-ups
• HTA evaluation/critique of submissions on behalf of local payers, international payers and charities
• Non-product specific structured expert elicitation
• Systematic and targeted literature reviews to inform HTA submissions and landscape mapping (non-product specific)
• Primary and secondary data analysis (non-product specific)
• Budget impact models 

PenTAG can assist companies seeking support in clinical development of products and support national and local NHS organisations who require support with resource planning and clinical decision-making.

PenTAG has a strong reputation for high quality methods research, as evidenced by team members’ publication records. We are always happy to discuss your research aims and support you to develop and complete research that suits your needs. Examples of research we have recent experience with include:

• The development and/or refinement of best practice methodology to inform HTA (non-product specific)
• Development and evaluation of healthcare and reimbursement policy, on both a national and international scale
• Outcome selection for research, including the identification of clinically meaningful minimally important differences/non-inferiority margins
• Qualitative research with key stakeholders to identify research priorities and guide research design

Please see a full list of our current and past NICE projects on our PenTAG web page