The transferability of economic evaluations: Concept and instruments of measure [La transferibilidad de las evaluaciones económicas: Concepto e instrumentos de medida]

Resumen

Objective: Economic evaluation studies provide some information that can be useful when taking decisions, and an increasing number of papers is currently been published on this matter. However, such studies are relevant for a specific context, and they cannot always be used in a different context with no checking. That is, transfer to other contexts is not straightforward. This article aims to show how the various ways to deal with this problem have evolved, ant to describe the methods that have been offered by several authors to assess economic evaluation transferability. Methods: Concepts related to results transfer are defined, and methods or indexes suggested by several authors in last decade are then reviewed and summarized. Some comments regarding its practical application are also reported. Results: Six approaches to transferability are described. Some of them are based on numerical indexes that include several weighted concepts; some others review a list of concepts with a dichotomised assessment. Based on such assessments, researchers must establish a general criterion to accept or not that results are transferable. Conclusions: Decisions taken by healthcare agents should be based on previous economic evaluations, to improve decision taking process efficiency. Transferability of studies is crucial for this. The selected index will determine future decisions. Thus, healthcare agents should know available tools to measure transferability and to weigh their advantages and disadvantages, as well as efforts needed to apply them. © 2012 Adis Data Information BV. All rights reserved.