Challenges, considerations, and approaches for developing a cost-effectiveness model for the adjuvant treatment of muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma: with a spotlight on nivolumab versus placebo

Siguroli Teitsson*, Thor Henrik Brodtkorb, Murat Kurt, Miraj Y. Patel, Tayla Poretta, Christopher Knight, Farzam Kamgar, Stephen Palmer

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalLetterpeer-review

Abstract

Aims: To present alternative approaches related to both structural assumptions and data sources for the development of a decision analytic model for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of adjuvant nivolumab compared with surveillance in patients with high-risk muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma (MIUC) after radical resection. Methods and results: Alternative approaches related to both structural assumptions and data sources are presented to address challenges and data gaps, as well as discussion of strengths and limitations of each approach. Specifically, challenges and considerations related to the following are presented: (1) selection of a modeling approach (partitioned survival model or state transition model) given the available evidence, (2) choice of health state structure (three- or four-state) to model disease progression and subsequent therapy, (3) modeling of outcomes from subsequent therapy using tunnel states to account for time-dependent transition probabilities or absorbing health states with one-off costs and outcomes applied, and (4) methods for modeling health-state transitions in a setting where treatment has curative intent and available survival data are immature. Conclusions: Multiple considerations must be taken into account when developing an economic model for new, emerging oncology treatments in early lines of therapy, all of which can affect the model’s overall ability to estimate (quality-adjusted) survival benefits over a lifetime horizon. This paper identifies a series of key structural and analytic considerations regarding modeling of nivolumab treatment in the adjuvant MIUC setting. Several alternative approaches with regard to structure and data have been included in a flexible cost-effectiveness model so the impact of the alternative approaches on model results can be explored. The impact of these alternative approaches on cost-effectiveness results are presented in a companion article. Our findings may also help inform the development of future models for other treatments and settings in early-stage cancer.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)473-481
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Medical Economics
Volume27
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Bristol Myers Squibb. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • cost-effectiveness
  • Muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma
  • state transition model
  • tunnel health states

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