Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.
Good practices for real‐world data studies of treatment and/or comparative effectiveness: recommendations from the Joint ISPOR‐ISPE Special Task Force on Real‐World Evidence in Health Care Decision Making. Value in Health Published 15th September 2017
I have an instinctive mistrust of buzzwords. They’re often used to avoid properly defining something, either because it’s too complicated or – worse – because it isn’t worth defining in the first place. For me, ‘real-world evidence’ falls foul. If your evidence isn’t from the real world, then it isn’t evidence at all. But I do like a good old ISPOR Task Force report, so let’s see where this takes us. Real-world evidence (RWE) and its sibling buzzword real-world data (RWD) relate to observational studies and other data not collected in an experimental setting. The purpose of this ISPOR task force (joint with the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology) was to prepare some guidelines about the conduct of RWE/RWD studies, with a view to improving decision-makers’ confidence in them. Essentially, the hope is to try and create for RWE the kind of ecosystem that exists around RCTs, with procedures for study registration, protocols, and publication: a noble aim. The authors distinguish between 2 types of RWD: ‘Exploratory Treatment Effectiveness Studies’ and ‘Hypothesis Evaluating Treatment Effectiveness Studies’. The idea is that the latter test a priori hypotheses, and these are the focus of this report. Seven recommendations are presented: i) pre-specify the hypotheses, ii) publish a study protocol, iii) publish the study with reference to the protocol, iv) enable replication, v) test hypotheses on a separate dataset than the one used to generate the hypotheses, vi) publically address methodological criticisms, and vii) involve key stakeholders. Fair enough. But these are just good practices for research generally. It isn’t clear how they are in any way specific to RWE. Of course, that was always going to be the case. RWE-specific recommendations would be entirely contingent on whether or not one chose to define a study as using ‘real-world evidence’ (which you shouldn’t, because it’s meaningless). The authors are trying to fit a bag of square pegs into a hole of undefined shape. It isn’t clear to me why retrospective observational studies, prospective observational studies, registry studies, or analyses of routinely collected clinical data should all be treated the same, yet differently to randomised trials. Maybe someone can explain why I’m mistaken, but this report didn’t do it.
Are children rational decision makers when they are asked to value their own health? A contingent valuation study conducted with children and their parents. Health Economics [PubMed] [RePEc] Published 13th September 2017
Obtaining health state utility values for children presents all sorts of interesting practical and theoretical problems, especially if we want to use them in decisions about trade-offs with adults. For this study, the researchers conducted a contingent valuation exercise to elicit children’s (aged 7-19) preferences for reduced risk of asthma attacks in terms of willingness to pay. The study was informed by two preceding studies that sought to identify the best way in which to present health risk and financial information to children. The participating children (n=370) completed questionnaires at school, which asked about socio-demographics, experience of asthma, risk behaviours and altruism. They were reminded (in child-friendly language) about the idea of opportunity cost, and to consider their own budget constraint. Baseline asthma attack risk and 3 risk-reduction scenarios were presented graphically. Two weeks later, the parents completed similar questionnaires. Only 9% of children were unwilling to pay for risk reduction, and most of those said that it was the mayor’s problem! In some senses, the children did a better job than their parents. The authors conducted 3 tests for ‘incorrect’ responses – 14% of adults failed at least one, while only 4% of children did so. Older children demonstrated better scope sensitivity. Of course, children’s willingness to pay was much lower in absolute terms than their parents’, because children have a much smaller budget. As a percentage of the budget, parents were – on average – willing to pay more than children. That seems reassuringly predictable. Boys and fathers were willing to pay more than girls and mothers. Having experience of frequent asthma attacks increased willingness to pay. Interestingly, teenagers were willing to pay less (as a proportion of their budget) than younger children… and so were the teenagers’ parents! Children’s willingness to pay was correlated with that of their own parent’s at the higher risk reductions but not the lowest. This study reports lots of interesting findings and opens up plenty of avenues for future research. But the take-home message is obvious. Kids are smart. We should spend more time asking them what they think.
Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes: aims and scope. Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes Published 12th September 2017
Here we have a new journal that warrants a mention. The journal is sponsored by the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL), making it a sister journal of Quality of Life Research. One of its Co-Editors-in-Chief is the venerable David Feeny, of HUI fame. They’ll be looking to publish research using PRO(M) data from trials or routine settings, studies of the determinants of PROs, qualitative studies in the development of PROs; anything PRO-related, really. This could be a good journal for more thorough reporting of PRO data that can get squeezed out of a study’s primary outcome paper. Also, “JPRO” is fun to say. The editors don’t mention that the journal is open access, but the website states that it is, so APCs at the ready. ISOQOL members get a discount.
Research and development spending to bring a single cancer drug to market and revenues after approval. JAMA Internal Medicine [PubMed] Published 11th September 2017
We often hear that new drugs are expensive because they’re really expensive to develop. Then we hear about how much money pharmaceutical companies spend on marketing, and we baulk. The problem is, pharmaceutical companies aren’t forthcoming with their accounts, so researchers have to come up with more creative ways to estimate R&D spending. Previous studies have reported divergent estimates. Whether R&D costs ‘justify’ high prices remains an open question. For this study, the authors looked at public data from the US for 10 companies that had only one cancer drug approved by the FDA between 2007 and 2016. Not very representative, perhaps, but useful because it allows for the isolation of the development costs associated with a single drug reaching the market. The median time for drug development was 7.3 years. The most generous estimate of the mean cost of development came in at under a billion dollars; substantially less than some previous estimates. This looks like a bargain; the mean revenue for the 10 companies up to December 2016 was over $6.5 billion. This study may seem a bit back-of-the-envelope in nature. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t accurate. If anything, it begs more confidence than some previous studies because the methods are entirely transparent.
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