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.
Methodological issues in assessing the economic value of next-generation sequencing tests: many challenges and not enough solutions. Value in Health [PubMed] Published 8th August 2018
This month’s issue of Value in Health includes a themed section on assessing the value of next-generation sequencing. Next-generation sequencing is sometimes hailed as the holy grail in medicine. The promise is that our individual genome can indicate how at-risk we are for many diseases. The question is whether the information obtained by these tests is worth their costs and potentially harmful consequences on well-being and health-related quality of life. This largely remains unexplored, so I expect seeing more economic evaluations of next-generation sequencing in the future.
This paper has caught my eye given an ongoing project on cascade testing protocols for familial hypercholesterolaemia. Next-generation sequencing can be used to identify the genetic cause of familial hypercholesterolaemia, thereby identifying patients suitable to have their relatives tested for the disease. I read this paper with the hope of finding inspiration for our economic evaluation.
This thought-provoking paper discusses the challenges in conducting economic evaluations of next-generation sequencing, such as complex model structure, inclusion of upstream and downstream costs, identifying comparators, identifying costs and outcomes that are related to the test, measuring costs and outcomes, evidence synthesis, data availability and quality.
I agree with the authors that these are important challenges, and it was useful to see them explained in a systematic way. Another valuable feature of this paper is the summary of applied studies which have encountered these challenges and their approaches to overcome them. It’s encouraging to read about how other studies have dealt with complex decision problems!
I’d argue that the challenges are applicable to economic evaluations of many other interventions. For example, identifying the relevant comparators can be a challenge in the evaluations of treatments: in an evaluation of hepatitis C drugs, we compared 633 treatment sequences in 14 subgroups. I view the challenges as the issues to think about when planning an economic evaluation of any intervention: what the comparators are, the scope of the evaluation, the model conceptualisation, data sources and their statistical analysis. Therefore, I’d recommend this paper as an addition to your library about the conceptualisation of economic evaluations.
Compliance with requirement to report results on the EU Clinical Trials Register: cohort study and web resource. BMJ [PubMed] Published 12th September 2018
You may be puzzled at the choice of the latest Ben Goldacre and colleagues’ paper, as it does not include an economic component. This study investigates compliance with the European Commission’s requirements that all trials on the EU Clinical Trials Register post results to the registry within 12 months of completion. At first sight, the economic implications may not be obvious, but they do exist and are quite important.
Clinical trials are a large investment of resources, not only financial but also in the health of patients who accept to take part in an experiment that may impact their health adversely. Therefore, clinical trials can have a huge sunk cost in both money and health. The payoff only realises if the trial is reported. If the trial is not reported, the benefits from the investment cannot be realised. In sum, an unreported trial is clearly a cost-ineffective use of resources.
The solution is simple: ensure that trial results are reported. This way we can all benefit from the information collected by the trial. The issue is, as Goldacre and colleagues have revealed, compliance is far from perfect.
Remarkably, around half of the 7,274 studies are due to publish results. The worst offenders are non-commercial sponsors, where only 11% of trials had their results reported (compared with 68% of trials by a commercial sponsor).
The authors provide a web tool to look up unreported trials by institution. I looked up my very own University of York. It was reassuring to know that my institution has no trials due to report results. Nonetheless, many others are less compliant.
This is an exciting study on the world of clinical trials. I’d suggest that a possible next step would be to estimate the health lost and costs from failing to report trial results.
Network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies identifies and ranks the optimal diagnostic tests and thresholds for health care policy and decision-making. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology [PubMed] Published 13th March 2018
Diagnostic tests are an emerging area of methodological development. This timely paper by Rhiannon Owen and colleagues addresses the important topic of evidence synthesis of diagnostic test accuracy studies.
Diagnostic test studies cannot be meta-analysed with the standard techniques used for treatment effectiveness. This is because there are two quantities of interest (sensitivity and specificity), which are correlated, and vary depending on the test threshold (that is, the value at which we say the test result is positive or negative).
Owen and colleagues propose a new approach to synthesising diagnostic test accuracy studies using network meta-analysis methodology. This innovative method allows for comparing multiple tests, evaluated at various test threshold values.
I cannot comment on the method itself as evidence synthesis is not my area of expertise. My interest comes from my experience in the economic evaluation of diagnostic tests, where we often wish to combine evidence from various studies.
With this in mind, I recommend having a look at the NIHR Complex Reviews Support Unit website for more handy tools and the latest research on methods for evidence synthesis. For example, the CRSU has a web tool for meta-analysis of diagnostic tests and a web tool to conduct network meta-analysis for those of us who are not evidence synthesis experts. Providing web tools is a brilliant way of helping analysts using these methods so, hopefully, we’ll see greater use of evidence synthesis in the future.
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