Evidence Synthesis for Decision Making 1: Introduction

Sofia Dias*, Nicky J Welton, Alex J. Sutton, A E Ades

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

133 Citations (Scopus)
522 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We introduce the series of 7 tutorial papers on evidence synthesis methods for decision making, based on the Technical Support Documents in Evidence Synthesis prepared for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Decision Support Unit. Although oriented to NICE's Technology Appraisal process, which examines new pharmaceutical products in a cost-effectiveness framework, the methods presented throughout the tutorials are equally relevant to clinical guideline development and to comparisons between medical devices, or public health interventions. Detailed guidance is given on how to use the other tutorials in the series, which propose a single evidence synthesis framework that covers fixed and random effects models, pairwise meta-analysis, indirect comparisons, and network meta-analysis, and where outcomes expressed in several different reporting formats can be analyzed without recourse to normal approximations. We describe the principles of evidence synthesis required by the 2008 revision of the NICE Guide to the Methods of Technology Appraisal and explain how the approach proposed in these tutorials was designed to conform to those requirements. We finish with some suggestions on how to present the evidence, the synthesis methods, and the results.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)597-606
Number of pages10
JournalMedical Decision Making
Volume33
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2013

Keywords

  • cost-effectiveness analysis
  • Bayesian meta-analysis
  • systematic reviews
  • network meta-analysis
  • trials

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Evidence Synthesis for Decision Making 1: Introduction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this