USE OF ECONOMIC-EVALUATION GUIDELINES - 2 YEARS EXPERIENCE IN CANADA

Considerable effort has been expended in recent years in the developme nt of methodology guidelines for economic evaluation of pharmaceutical products, driven in part by the desire to improve the rigour and qual ity of economic evaluations and to help decision making. Canada was on e of the first countries to develop such guidelines and to encourage t heir use. This paper examines the extent to which the economic evaluat ions that were submitted to the Canadian Coordinating Office for Healt h Technology Assessment in the last two years adhered to Canadian guid elines. The analytic technique employed by twelve studies as well as t he comparator used, the perspective taken, the outcome measure selecte d, the cost items that were taken into consideration and the extent of sensitivity analyses that were performed are reviewed in this paper. It can be concluded that although studies have been of variable qualit y, the majority of them were well presented, complete and transparent, due in part to the guidelines. Except for the perspective of the anal ysis, guidelines were, in many respects, adhered to and did not restri ct investigators to specific methodologies or specific techniques. The y were also instrumental in ensuring a minimum set of standards. (C) 1 998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.