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.
A comparison of national guidelines for network meta-analysis. Value in Health [PubMed] Published October 2019
The evolving treatment landscape results in a greater dependence on indirect treatment comparisons to generate estimates of clinical effectiveness, where the current practice has not been compared to the proposed new intervention in a head-to-head trial. This paper is a review of the guidelines of reimbursement bodies for conducting network meta-analyses. Reassuringly, the authors find that it is possible to meet the needs of multiple agencies with one analysis.
The authors assign three categories to the criteria; “assessment and analysis to test assumptions required for a network meta-analysis, presentation and reporting of results, and justification of modelling choices”, with heterogeneity of the included studies highlighted as one of the key elements to be sure to include if prioritisation of the criteria is necessary. I think this is a simple way of thinking about what needs to be presented but the ‘justification’ category, in my experience, is often given less weight than the other two.
This paper is a useful resource for companies submitting to multiple HTA agencies with the requirements of each national body displayed in tables that are easy to navigate. It meets a practical need but doesn’t really go far enough for me. They do signpost to the PRISMA criteria, but I think it would have been really good to think about the purpose of the submission guidelines; to encourage a logical and coherent summary of the approaches taken so the evidence can be evaluated by decision-makers.
Variation in responsiveness to warranted behaviour change among NHS clinicians: novel implementation of change detection methods in longitudinal prescribing data. BMJ [PubMed] Published 2nd October 2019
I really like this paper. Such a lot of work, from all sectors, is devoted to the production of relevant and timely evidence to inform practice, but if the guidance does not become embedded into the real world then its usefulness is limited.
The authors have managed to utilize a HUGE amount of data to identify the real reaction to two pieces of guidance recommending a change in practice in England. The authors used “trend indicator saturation”, which I’m not ashamed to admit I knew nothing about beforehand, but it is explained nicely. Their thoughtful use of the information available to them results in three indicators of response (in this case the deprescribing of two drugs) around when the change occurs, how quickly it occurs, and how much change occurs.
The authors discover variation in response to the recommendations but suggest an application of their methods could be used to generate feedback to clinicians and therefore drive further response. As some primary care practices took a while to embed the guidance change into their prescribing, the paper raises interesting questions as to where the barriers to the adoption of guidance have occurred.
What is next for patient preferences in health technology assessment? A systematic review of the challenges. Value in Health Published November 2019
It may be that patient preferences have a role to play in the uptake of guideline recommendations, as proposed by the authors of my final paper this week. This systematic review, of the literature around embedding patient preferences into HTA decision-making, groups the discussion in the academic literature into five broad areas; conceptual, normative, procedural, methodological, and practical. The authors state that their purpose was not to formulate their own views, merely to present the available literature, but they do a good job of indicating where to find more opinionated literature on this topic.
Methodological issues were the biggest group, with aspects such as the sample selection, internal and external validity of the preferences generated, and the generalisability of the preferences collected from a sample to the entire population. However, in general, the number of topics covered in the literature is vast and varied.
It’s a great summary of the challenges that are faced, and a ranking based on frequency of topic being mentioned in the literature drives the authors proposed next steps. They recommend further research into the incorporation of preferences within or beyond the QALY and the use of multiple-criteria decision analysis as a method of integrating patient preferences into decision-making. I support the need for “a scientifically and valid manner” to integrate patient preferences into HTA decision-making but wonder if we can first learn of what works well and hasn’t worked so well from the attempts of HTA agencies thus far.
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