Abstract
The systematic review of economic evaluations plays a critical role in making well-informed decisions about competing healthcare interventions. The quality of these systematic reviews varies due to the lack of internationally recognized methodological evaluation standards. Nine English and Chinese databases including the Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMbase (Ovid), NHS economic evaluation database (NHSEED) (Ovid), Health Technology Assessment (HTA) database, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WangFang, VIP Chinese Science & Technology Periodicals (VIP) and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) were searched. Two reviewers independently screened studies and extracted data. The methodological quality of the literature was measured with modified AMSTAR. Data were narrative synthesized. 165 systematic reviews were included. The overall methodological quality of the literature was moderate according to the AMSTAR scale. In these articles, thirteen quality assessment tools and 32 author self-defined criteria were used. The three most widely used tools were the Drummond checklist (19.4%), the BMJ checklist (15.8%), the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement (12.7%). Others included the Quality of Health Economic Studies (QHES), the Consensus on Health Economic Criteria (CHEC), the checklist of Center for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), the Philips checklist, the World Health Organization (WHO) checklist, the checklist of Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP), the Pediatric Quality Appraisal Questionnaire (PQAQ), the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) checklist, Spanish and Chinese guidelines. The quantitative scales used in these literature were the QHES and PQAQ. Evidence showed that pharmacoeconomic systematic reviews' methodology remained to be improved, and the quality assessment criteria were gradually unified. Multiple scales can be used in combination to evaluate the quality of economic research in different settings and types.
Highlights
It has become a great challenge for health policy-makers concerning the issue of realizing a more efficient allocation of limited medical and health resources [1, 2]
The overall methodological quality of the literature was moderate according to the AMSTAR scale
The three most widely used tools were the Drummond checklist (19.4%), the British Medical Journal (BMJ) checklist (15.8%), the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement (12.7%)
Summary
It has become a great challenge for health policy-makers concerning the issue of realizing a more efficient allocation of limited medical and health resources [1, 2]. Advocates such as Cochrane Collaboration, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), believed that the results of a pharmacoeconomic SR could help in public health assessment and policy-making [5, 8,9,10,11] They maintained that it was not to produce the authoritative result on the relative cost-effectiveness but rather help decision-makers understanding the structure and potential impact of resource allocation issues. The weaknesses were that the database was not thoroughly searched and the quality evaluation of included studies was not described in approximately half and one-third of literature, respectively Another SR conducted by Luhnen et al in 2018 concluded that the methodologies applied for 83 SRs of health economic evaluations in HTA agencies and their reporting quality were very heterogeneous [16]. The quality of these systematic reviews varies due to the lack of internationally recognized methodological evaluation standards
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