The Population Health Impact Model (PHIM) was developed prior to marketing our reduced risk product (RRP)*, to help assess and understand the potential impact of marketing such products on population health within specific countries. The PHIM uses publicly available data on smoking prevalence and smoking-related disease-specific mortality, together with estimates of the exposure of the RRP relative to a cigarette. The original modeling used a set of assumptions to define possible scenarios that could happen after the introduction of an RRP into a market, in order to assess the possible prevalence of cigarette and RRP use patterns (including combine product use). It allowed us to compare various scenarios with and without the introduction of the RRP during the same time period (1990-2010) to predict the change in smoking attributable deaths (SAD) and life years saved from the major smoking-related diseases (lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, stroke, and COPD).

In Japan, our heated tobacco product has been marketed nationally since 2016 and there are multiple products that have entered the market since. Initially we modeled the RRP uptake base-case scenario where ten years after marketing the RRP, 55% of the smokers had switched to the RRP (heated tobacco products such as IQOS). The results demonstrate that within 20 years Japan could see 0.96 million life years saved (75,820 SAD reduction). Now that the product is in the market, we are able to use actual population-level data to replace some of the estimates of product uptake, and redefine scenarios based on what is known.

It is important that we not only assess the impact of tobacco harm reduction pre-market, but that we are actively collecting and using data from the real world to better understand the actual population impacts after actually introducing RRP into a market as a replacement to cigarettes.

* ”RRP” is the term PMI uses to refer to products that present, are likely to present, or have the potential to present less risk of harm to smokers who switch to these products versus continued smoking.