Economic Evaluation - Evaluation alongside clinical trials
Several research projects within the school involve economic evaluation of therapies or interventions using patient level data from clinical trials. Such trials typically have collected information on resource use (e.g. number of hospital episodes) as well as clinical outcomes.
Incremental cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analyses can then be undertaken for such interventions in which the incremental net cost and net effectiveness were calculated in relation to the comparator, and expressed as a ratio. In most cases this involves extrapolation as most clinical trials do not continue long enough to fully observe economic outcomes such as changes in life expectancy. A key issue when conducting this type of analyses is to capture the join uncertainty surrounding both costs and effects.
A recent example is a cost utility analysis of intensive blood glucose and blood pressure control using information from the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS).
Researchers within the school are currently involved with an economic evaluation of the ADVANCE (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease) study.
Researchers Involved
Selected Publications
Clarke PM. Gray, A. Briggs A, Stevens R., Matthews D and Holman R. On behalf of the UK Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS 72) “Cost utility analyses of intensive blood-glucose and tight blood-pressure control in Type 2 diabetes” Diabetologia. 2005 May;48(5):868-77.