PNS203 USE OF DISCRETE CHOICE EXPERIMENTS TO INFORM HTA DECISION MAKING.

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Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a regularly used preference elicitation technique in health economics to elicit preferences for both healthcare interventions and programmes. There is growing recognition that DCEs have the potential to contribute more directly to outcome research for use in economic evaluation, such as health technology assessments (HTA). DCE methodology has recently developed to facilitate the use of the technique to elicit preferences of health states on a scale suitable for informing estimates of quality adjusted life years (QALYs). The aim of this pragmatic literature review was to understand the extent to which DCEs are used to inform HTA decision-making. We conducted targeted searches of selected HTA agency websites using Google’s site search function for terms such as “discrete choice experiment". The four agencies (NICE/England, CADTH/Canada, HAS/France and ICER/USA), were chosen for their prominence in the field of health technology appraisal and the transparency of the processes by which they evaluate healthcare technologies. A bespoke template was developed and used in the data extraction. All four agencies have used DCEs to inform HTA decision-making, however, the degree to which they are used varies between agencies. NICE has predominantly used DCEs within its Clinical Guidelines/Public Health programmes. DCE has also been used within its Technology Appraisal programme, although this has been limited to date. CADTH has used methodology involving DCEs to inform its HTA decision-making processes. HAS have also used DCE to inform its decision-making processes; however, much less frequently. Lastly, ICER has referenced DCEs within both its evidence reviews and scoping documents. Although uptake of this preference elicitation technique has been limited, it is clear that all four agencies recognise DCEs as an effective method for preference elicitation in the context of HTA.