Drug Evaluation Committee Is the Population Adjustment Method Useful in Indirect Comparisons? Matching Adjusted Indirect Comparison and Simulated Treatment Comparison
Data Science Subcommittee
January 2022
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK, an early adopter of cost-effectiveness evaluation, has published 21 Technical Support Documents (TSD) on statistical methods for health economic evaluation. Document (TSD) on statistical methods for conducting health economic evaluation. These TSDs are very helpful documents for Japan, which is formally introducing cost-effectiveness evaluation from 2019. The Data Science Subcommittee 2021 Continuing Task Force 3 is working to organize the subjects dealt with in NICE's TSDs and provide information that may be useful for practicing cost-effectiveness evaluation in Japan. This report focuses on TSD 18, Methods for population-adjusted indirect comparisons in submissions to NICE, and addresses the situation that companies commonly face (i.e., their own trials have individual patient data and other companies' trials have population Matching Adjusted Indirect Comparison (MAIC) and Simulated Treatment Comparison (STC)] to adjust for differences in the distribution of effect modifiers across trials in situations commonly faced by companies (where their own trials have individual patient data and other trials have only population-level or group-level data available). Matching Adjusted Indirect Comparison (MAIC) and Simulated Treatment Comparison (STC)] are described. The contents and theoretical background of this method are explained, and the performance of this method is evaluated by simulation studies, recent application cases are introduced, and examples of implementation using R are shown. Although this method has been applied to an increasing number of cases in recent years and has been recognized after its full-scale introduction in Japan, caution should be exercised when applying this method because it requires very strong assumptions. We hope that this report will assist you in selecting an appropriate method and conducting an analysis when conducting indirect comparisons.
Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, Committee on Drug Evaluation
Data Science Subcommittee 2021 Ongoing Task Force 3
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