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Is There a European View on Health Economic Evaluations? Results from a Synopsis of Methodological Guidelines Used in the EUnetHTA Partner Countries

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Abstract

Objectives

The objectives of this study were to review current methodological guidelines for economic evaluations of all types of technologies in the 33 countries with organizations involved in the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA), and to provide a general framework for economic evaluation at a European level.

Methods

Methodological guidelines for health economic evaluations used by EUnetHTA partners were collected through a survey. Information from each guideline was extracted using a pre-tested extraction template. On the basis of the extracted information, a summary describing the methods used by the EUnetHTA countries was written for each methodological item. General recommendations were formulated for methodological issues where the guidelines of the EUnetHTA partners were in agreement or where the usefulness of economic evaluations may be increased by presenting the results in a specific way.

Results

At least one contact person from all 33 EUnetHTA countries (100 %) responded to the survey. In total, the review included 51 guidelines, representing 25 countries (eight countries had no methodological guideline for health economic evaluations). On the basis of the results of the extracted information from all 51 guidelines, EUnetHTA issued ten main recommendations for health economic evaluations.

Conclusions

The presented review of methodological guidelines for health economic evaluations and the consequent recommendations will hopefully improve the comparability, transferability and overall usefulness of economic evaluations performed within EUnetHTA. Nevertheless, there are still methodological issues that need to be investigated further.

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Acknowledgments

All authors were part of the draft group that collected and analysed the information from the guidelines, developed the recommendations and wrote the EUnetHTA report. EH, AG-G and TD prepared the first draft of the manuscript. RS-E, SG, FFH and VPR all contributed to specific parts of the text, as well as providing comments on the manuscript. The authors of this guideline are grateful to all persons who responded to the survey and/or were part of the extensive internal and external review of the guideline. The authors are also grateful to Jörg Lauterberg for coordinating the work with the methodological guidelines in Work Package 7 in an excellent manner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU), Box 3657, SE 103 59, Stockholm, Sweden

    Emelie Heintz & Thomas Davidson

  2. Center for Medical Technology Assessment (CMT), Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Emelie Heintz & Thomas Davidson

  3. Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG), Cologne, Germany

    Andreas Gerber-Grote

  4. Department of Economic and Public Health Evaluation, Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), Saint-Denis, France

    Salah Ghabri & Francoise F. Hamers

  5. Institute for Economic Research (IER), Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Valentina Prevolnik Rupel & Renata Slabe-Erker

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  1. Emelie Heintz
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  2. Andreas Gerber-Grote
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  3. Salah Ghabri
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  4. Francoise F. Hamers
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  6. Renata Slabe-Erker
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  7. Thomas Davidson
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EUnetHTA Joint Action 2, Work Package 7, Subgroup 3

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emelie Heintz.

Ethics declarations

This study was conducted as a project within EUnetHTA Joint Action 2, which was financed by the European Union within the framework of the Health Programme. EH, AG-G, SG, FFH, VPR, RS-E and TD are all employed by an HTA agency and have no conflicts of interest.

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EUnetHTA Joint Action 2, Work Package 7, Subgroup 3., Heintz, E., Gerber-Grote, A. et al. Is There a European View on Health Economic Evaluations? Results from a Synopsis of Methodological Guidelines Used in the EUnetHTA Partner Countries. PharmacoEconomics 34, 59–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-015-0328-1

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