Transparency, openness and reproducible research practices are frequently underused in health economic evaluations
Abstract
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the extent to which articles of economic evaluations of healthcare interventions indexed in MEDLINE incorporate research practices that promote transparency, openness and reproducibility.
STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING
We evaluated a random sample of health economic evaluations indexed in MEDLINE during 2019. We included articles written in English reporting an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICERs) in terms of costs per life years gained, quality-adjusted life years and/or disability-adjusted life years. Reproducible research practices, openness and transparency in each article was extracted in duplicate. We explored whether reproducible research practices were associated with self-report use of a guideline.
RESULTS
We included 200 studies published in 147 journals. Almost half were published as open access articles (n=93; 47%). Most studies (n=150; 75%) were model-based economic evaluations. In 109 (55%) studies, authors self-reported use a guideline (e.g., for study conduct or reporting). Few studies (n=31; 16%) reported working from a protocol. In 112 (56%) studies, authors reported the data needed to recreate the ICERs for the base case analysis. This percentage was higher in studies using a guideline than studies not using a guideline (72/109 [66%] with guideline vs. 40/91 [44%] without guideline; risk ratio 1.50, 95% confidence interval 1.15 - 1.97). Only 10 (5%) studies mentioned access to raw data and analytic code for reanalyses.
CONCLUSION…
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