PACE partners with Edge Health to bring health economic evaluation to the early stages of AMR diagnostic development

PACE (Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy) has today announced its second enabling project: a partnership with health economics consultancy Edge Health to develop health economic tools and analysis tailored specifically to early-stage AMR diagnostic technologies.

PACE was founded in 2023 by LifeArc, Medicines Discovery Catapult, and Innovate UK, with a £30 million programme of funding and support deployed over five years. Focused on removing barriers in the AMR research and development (R&D) ecosystem, PACE goes beyond funding to provide its portfolio of projects with the tools, networks, and expertise they need to succeed.

Enabling projects are a key part of that offer, addressing shared challenges across PACE’s funded cohort and the wider sector. This latest partnership responds to a clear and consistent need identified across PACE’s diagnostics cohort: innovators want to understand and articulate the economic value of their technologies at an early stage of development but lack the tools and expertise to do so.

Health economic evaluation – assessing the costs, outcomes, and system-level impact of a new technology – has traditionally been something diagnostic developers tackle late in the process, if at all. By then, fundamental design decisions have already been made and course-correcting is costly and slow.

Working with PACE’s diagnostics cohort, Edge Health will develop the tools and expertise to make health economic insights accessible for early-stage teams to inform important decisions, such as which markets to target, how to position their technology, and where to focus their evidence generation.

The work spans three core activities, assessing not just the potential economic value of novel diagnostics, but also their practical impact and likelihood of adoption in very different healthcare settings:

• Care pathway analysis covering bloodstream infections, respiratory tract infections, and urinary tract infections, mapping how care is delivered across the UK, US, EU, and lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and identifying where a new diagnostic could change clinical decisions and downstream outcomes.
• A structured economic modelling tool that draws on this pathway analysis, enabling teams to test scenarios against realistic assumptions without needing deep technical expertise.
• Bespoke value propositions for each PACE diagnostics project, developed in direct collaboration with the teams themselves and drawing on their specific performance data, indication, and target markets.

There is currently no publicly available resource of this kind for AMR diagnostic innovators. The care pathway analyses and modelling tool are intended to become open-access outputs, available to PACE awardees and the broader AMR diagnostics community.

AMR is a global health emergency. Diagnostics that enable faster, more targeted treatment have the potential to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use, cut healthcare costs, and slow the emergence of resistance. But their value and pathway to adoption is complex and context-dependent.

The tools developed through this collaboration will help innovators articulate and substantiate that value in a credible, evidence-based way, supporting product development, investor engagement, and future reimbursement discussions across global healthcare settings.

George Batchelor, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Edge Health, said “Edge Health is pleased to be working with PACE on a health economic evaluation framework for novel AMR technologies. This is exactly where health economics can add real value: helping promising technologies move from good ideas to credible, scalable solutions. AMR is one of the defining global health challenges, and we are proud to support work that could help bring forward technologies with the potential to make a real difference.”

Pete Coombs, Programme Director (Interim) and Scientific Lead, PACE said “Diagnostic innovations for AMR will only succeed if they can clearly demonstrate value in real-world settings. PACE’s exciting new partnership with Edge Health will give innovators access to a package of support that will help them demonstrate and maximise the value of their product in different infections and settings. Importantly, it will enable them to understand how their technologies can be better integrated into existing care pathways, while also evidencing their broader impact, such as reducing inappropriate antibiotic use. Ultimately, the goal remains to deliver better patient outcomes globally by supporting innovations that are designed with the future in mind and aligned with health systems, payer requirements, and evolving policy and reimbursement frameworks.”