Premium
Assessing the appropriateness of combining economic data from multinational clinical trials
Author(s) -
Cook John R.,
Drummond Michael,
Glick Henry,
Heyse Joseph F.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.1389
Subject(s) - multinational corporation , economic evaluation , clinical trial , economic model , econometrics , actuarial science , medicine , economics , finance , macroeconomics , pathology
Because of the potential for large variability among countries in the utilization and cost of health care resources, it is important to assess the appropriateness of combining economic data across the countries in a multinational clinical economic trial. We show how available tests for interaction can be applied to economic endpoints, including cost‐effectiveness ratios and net health benefits. This analysis includes a characterization of possible interactions being quantitative or qualitative in nature. In the absence of interaction, a pooled estimate of the economic endpoint should be representative of the participating countries. We explore the analytic issues by further analysing data from the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S). Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.