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Bayesian sequential sampling for the economic evaluation of health technologies: opportunity or dead end?

Thursday 22 November 2012, 1.30PM to 2.30pm

Speaker(s): Martin Forster, University of York. Co-authors: Paolo Pertile, University of Verona and Davide La Torre, University of Milan

Abstract: A Bayesian sequential sampling approach to the economic evaluation of health technologies allows a researcher to update a prior distribution for cost-effectiveness step-by-step, as new sample information arrives. In so doing, it offers the potential to improve how health care systems and regulators allocate funding for research into, and the provision of, health technologies. However, the demanding assumptions underlying such an approach have been criticised for making it un-implementable in practice. Little research has been published which shows what an application of such a model might look like.

We present a Bayes sequential economic evaluation model in which there exists flexibility over the timing of a decision to stop researching and recommend adoption of a new health technology or continued use of an existing one and which accounts for the costs and benefits of both research and adoption. We apply the model to a case study for the treatment of bacterial sinusitis, deriving dynamic thresholds defining optimal policies as a function of sample size. We discuss the insights that such models can offer, as well as the obstacles that might stand in the way of their use in practice.

Location: Alcuin A019/020

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