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Health economics
Original research
Developing core economic parameter sets for asthma studies: a realist review and an analytical framework
  1. Chris Roukas1,
  2. Zahidul Quayyum2,
  3. Anita Patel3,
  4. Deborah Fitzsimmons4,
  5. Ceri Phillips4,
  6. Natalia Hounsome5
  1. 1Centre of Primary Care and Public Health, Queen Mary University of London Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, London, UK
  2. 2School of Public Health, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  3. 3Anita Patel Health Economics Consulting Ltd, London, UK
  4. 4Swansea Centre for Health Economics, Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK
  5. 5Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Natalia Hounsome; n.hounsome{at}bsms.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective To develop a standardised set of economic parameters (core economic parameter set) for economic evaluations in asthma studies.

Design A systematic literature review and an analytical framework.

Outcome measures Economic parameters used to evaluate costs and cost-effectiveness of healthcare interventions for people with asthma.

Data sources PubMed, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the National Health Service Economic Evaluation Database, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects and the Health Technology Aaaessment Library starting from 1990.

Review methods Research methods were based on the realist review methodology and included a number of non-sequential, iterative and overlapping components, such as developing an analytical framework for the realist review; systematic literature review of economic parameters; identifying and categorising economic parameters; producing preliminary list of core economic parameters.

Results Database searches found 2531 publications of which 224 were included in the systematic review. We identified 65 economic parameters that were categorised into 11 groups to enable the realist synthesis. Parameters related to secondary care, primary care, medication use, emergency care and work productivity comprised 84% of all economic parameters. An analytical framework was used to investigate the rationale behind the choices of economic parameters in these studies. The main framework domains included type of intervention, research population, study design, study setting and a stakeholder’s perspective.

Conclusion Past research thus suggests that in asthma study parameters depicting the use of secondary care, primary care, medication, emergency care and work productivity can be considered as core economic parameters, since they apply to different types of studies. Parameters including diagnostics, healthcare delivery, school activity, informal care, medical devices and health utility apply to a particular type of study (or research question), and thus can be recommended as supplemental parameters.

PROSPERO registration number CRD42017067867.

  • asthma studies
  • health economics
  • core parameters
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037889

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors CR, ZQ and NH conducted database searches, literature selection and data extraction. AP conceived and provided intellectual leadership to the project and chaired group discussions at the Methodology Workshop 'Maximising Information from Empirical Studies' (London, 23 January, 2017). NH conducted data analyses. NH and CR wrote the first draft of the manuscript and integrated comments from coauthors. AP, DF, CP and ZQ critically revised the manuscript and provided methodological input.

    • Funding This work was funded by Asthma UK as part of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUK-AC-2012-01)

    • Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement No additional data are available.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.