With the growth in the use of health economic evaluation to inform healthcare resource allocation decisions, the challenges in applying standard methods to child health have become apparent. A unique limitation is the paucity of child-specific preference-based measures. A single, valid,...

Objective:Objective: The study aimed to conduct a systematic literature search to identify health state utilities for weight change in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and to review those values for appropriateness for inclusion in a submission to the National Institute for Health and Clinical...

Background: An important methodological issue in economic evaluations of healthcare is how to include productivity costs (the costs related to reduced productivity due to illness, disability and premature death). Traditionally, they were included in the numerator of a cost-effectiveness...

Background: For advanced epithelial ovarian cancer, oncologists are faced with multiple treatment options that differ in terms of possible clinical and patient-reported outcomes. Objective: To explore oncologists' preferences for hypothetical outcome scenarios (i.e. health states) resulting from...

Decision making in healthcare often involves decision alternatives that vary on different dimensions in conflicting ways, such as health benefits and costs. In such cases, it is not always easy to identify the best option, as a trade-off has to be made. In preference studies, patients evaluate...

Background: The questionnaires used in clinical research have often been developed and validated using paper, and in such cases it is necessary to show that the electronic versions are equivalent to the originals. Objective: To determine if electronic versions of questionnaires assessing...

The evolution of meningococcal vaccines illustrates nicely the incremental technological process that is common to much medical innovation and particularly appropriate to economic analysis. However, the economic evaluation of vaccines is complicated by several features unique to vaccines,...

Background: The growth of economic analyses and in particular cost-utility analyses (CUA), which use the QALY as a measure of outcome, has heightened the interest in the methodologies used to calculate the QALY. The EQ-5D has produced quite different utility values from that of the SF-6D. This...