King's Health Economics, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, The David Goldberg Centre, Box 024, London, SE5 8AF, UK.
School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK.
Pharmacoeconomics. 2021 Jul;39(7):757-770. doi: 10.1007/s40273-021-01038-1. Epub 2021 May 20.
The availability and use of tools to guide the choice of modelling technique are not well understood. Our study aims to review existing tools and explore the use of those tools in health economic models. Two reviews and one case study were conducted. Review 1 aimed to identify tools based on expert opinion and citation searching and explore the value of the tools for health economic models. Review 2, based on citation searching, aimed to describe how those tools have been used in health economic models. Both reviews were conducted using Web of Science and Scopus. Two independent reviewers selected studies for inclusion. A case study, focused on economic evaluations of antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia, was conducted to compare the modelling techniques used by existing models with modelling techniques recommended by identified tools. Seven tools were identified, of which the revised Brennan's toolkit, was assessed to be the most appropriate for health economic models. The seven tools were cited 126 times in publications reporting health economic models. Only 17 of these (13.5%) reported that they used the tool(s) to guide the choice of modelling technique. Application of these tools suggested discrete event simulation is most appropriate for modelling antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia, but discrete event simulation was only used by 17% of existing models. There is considerable inconsistency between the modelling techniques used by existing models and modelling techniques recommended by tools. It is recommended that for future modelling studies the choice of modelling technique should be justified, this can be achieved by the application of model selection tools, such as the revised Brennan's toolkit. Future research is required to explore the barriers to using model selection tools in health economic models and to update existing tools and make them easier to use.
工具的可用性和使用情况来指导建模技术的选择并不为人所知。我们的研究旨在回顾现有的工具，并探索这些工具在健康经济模型中的使用情况。进行了两项综述和一项案例研究。综述 1 旨在根据专家意见和引文搜索来确定工具，并探讨这些工具在健康经济模型中的价值。基于引文搜索的综述 2 旨在描述这些工具在健康经济模型中的使用情况。这两项综述都在 Web of Science 和 Scopus 上进行。两名独立的评审员选择纳入的研究。一项案例研究侧重于抗精神病药物治疗精神分裂症的经济评价，旨在比较现有模型使用的建模技术与确定工具推荐的建模技术。确定了七种工具，其中经过修订的 Brennan 工具包被评估为最适合健康经济模型。这七种工具在报告健康经济模型的出版物中被引用了 126 次。其中只有 17 篇（13.5%）报告说他们使用了工具来指导建模技术的选择。这些工具的应用表明，离散事件模拟最适合于模拟精神分裂症中的抗精神病药物，但只有 17%的现有模型使用了离散事件模拟。现有模型使用的建模技术与工具推荐的建模技术之间存在很大的不一致。建议未来的建模研究应该 justifies 建模技术的选择，这可以通过应用模型选择工具来实现，例如修订后的 Brennan 工具包。需要进一步研究在健康经济模型中使用模型选择工具的障碍，并更新现有的工具，使其更易于使用。
