Economic evaluations in international health technology assessments - a study of methodologies

Larsen RJ, Asmussen M, Christensen T, Olsen J, Poulsen PB, Sorensen J
Record ID 32004000709
English
Authors' objectives: The aim of the study was to assess the state of the art of economic evaluation carried out as part of health technology assessments.
Authors' recommendations: The state of the art of economic evaluations carried out as part of health technology assessments do not differ remarkably from that of economic evaluations in general. A notable exception is in the design, where the majority of the HTAs completed an economic evaluation retrospectively using secondary data in the form of a literature review or a meta-analysis. These data were often put together in a decision analytical model. This picture is not seen to this extent in economic evaluation in general, and is probably due to the nature of a health technology assessment as a synthesis of clinical and other evidence gathered from a systematic literature review. The hypothesis that economic evaluations carried out as part of health technology assessments are not as well developed as economic evaluations in general can therefore be discarded. The use of cost-utility analyses was actually more widespread in the health technology assessments than in general economic evaluations studies, and there were also two cases where cost-benefit analysis was used. This indicates the application of advanced methods of economic evaluation in health technology assessment. With respect to the identification of resource use, the sample of economic evaluations that were conducted as part of HTAs more often identified the categories of patient and time costs than did the sample of economic evaluations in general. Half of the health technology assessments had a serious flaw, however, in that the perspective of the economic evaluation was not clearly stated.
Authors' methods: Review
Details
Project Status: Completed
Year Published: 2003
English language abstract: An English language summary is available
Publication Type: Not Assigned
Country: Denmark
MeSH Terms
  • Costs and Cost Analysis
  • Technology Assessment, Biomedical
  • Models, Economic
  • Methods
Contact
Organisation Name: Danish Centre for Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment
Contact Address: National Board of Health, PO Box 1881, Islands Brygge 67, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. Tel: 45 72 22 74 48; Fax: 45 72 22 74 07/67
Contact Name: dacehta@sst.dk
Contact Email: dacehta@sst.dk
Copyright: Danish Centre for Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (DACEHTA) (formerly DIHTA)
This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA or other HTA producer. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database.