Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management, Munich School of Management, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Munich, Germany.
BMC Health Serv Res. 2012 Sep 4;12:300. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-12-300.
Economic evaluation of newborn screening poses specific methodological challenges. Amongst others, these challenges refer to the use of quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in newborns, and which costs and outcomes need to be considered in a full evaluation of newborn screening programmes. Because of the increasing scale and scope of such programmes, a better understanding of the methods of high-quality economic evaluations may be crucial for both producers/authors and consumers/reviewers of newborn screening-related economic evaluations. The aim of this study was therefore to develop specific guidelines designed to assess and improve the methodological quality of economic evaluations in newborn screening.
To develop the guidelines, existing guidelines for assessing the quality of economic evaluations were identified through a literature search, and were reviewed and consolidated using a deductive iterative approach. In a subsequent test phase, these guidelines were applied to various economic evaluations which acted as case studies.
The guidelines for assessing and improving the methodological quality of economic evaluations in newborn screening are organized into 11 categories: "bibliographic details", "study question and design", "modelling", "health outcomes", "costs", "discounting", "presentation of results", "sensitivity analyses", "discussion", "conclusions", and "commentary".
The application of the guidelines highlights important issues regarding newborn screening-related economic evaluations, and underscores the need for such issues to be afforded greater consideration in future economic evaluations. The variety in methodological quality detected by this study reveals the need for specific guidelines on the appropriate methods for conducting sound economic evaluations in newborn screening.
新生儿筛查的经济评估带来了特定的方法学挑战。其中包括在新生儿中使用质量调整生命年（QALYs），以及在全面评估新生儿筛查计划时需要考虑哪些成本和结果。由于这些计划的规模和范围不断扩大，对于新生儿筛查相关经济评估的生产者/作者和消费者/审查者来说，更好地理解高质量经济评估方法可能至关重要。因此，本研究的目的是制定专门的指南，旨在评估和提高新生儿筛查中经济评估的方法学质量。
为了制定指南，通过文献检索确定了评估经济评估质量的现有指南，并使用演绎迭代方法对其进行了审查和整合。在随后的测试阶段，将这些指南应用于各种作为案例研究的经济评估中。
新生儿筛查中经济评估方法学质量评估和提高指南分为 11 类：“文献详情”、“研究问题和设计”、“建模”、“健康结果”、“成本”、“贴现”、“结果呈现”、“敏感性分析”、“讨论”、“结论”和“评论”。
指南的应用突出了与新生儿筛查相关的经济评估中的重要问题，并强调需要在未来的经济评估中更加关注这些问题。本研究检测到的方法学质量的多样性表明，需要针对新生儿筛查中进行合理经济评估的适当方法制定具体指南。
