How cancer drug funding are made
A new tutorial on cancer drug funding is now available for download from www.cancerview.ca/cancerdrugfunding
Cancer Knowledge Network (CKN) provides valuable, practical resources for people living with cancer, the doctors who treat them, and the loved ones who care for them.
The Preparing Participants for Allocating Resources Equitably (PrePARE) PrePARE is an online tutorial designed to help support public discussion and expert deliberations on how health-care funding recommendations are made and for what drugs, programs, and treatments should receive public funding in Canada’s health-care system. The tutorial is developed by the Cancer Guidelines Advisory Group of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) in partnership with ARCC and the Priorities in Cancer Care Network. ARCC also contributed funding to support the evaluation of the PrePARE tool. PrePARE can be accessed by registering on the e-learning site of CPAC’sCancer View Canada.
Database of Instruments for Resource Use Measurement (DIRUM)
The aim of this project is to create a practical, open-access database of resource-use questionnaires for use by trial health economists. The project is led by Bangor University, and in collaboration with the Universities of Bristol, Birmingham, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and London School of Economics and Political Science.
Cancer Guidelines Resource Centre
The SAGE Inventory of Cancer Guidelines is a searchable database of over 1100 English language cancer control guidelines and standards released since 2003. The cancer guidelines have been rated for reporting quality using the AGREE II, the current gold standard in guideline critical appraisal. The inventory was developed and is maintained by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer’s Capacity Enhancement Program.
Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Registry (Tufts)
The Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) Registry at Tufts University is a comprehensive registry of healthcare cost-effectiveness analyses. Health-related CEAs are used to estimate in a ratio the resources used (costs) and the health benefits achieved (effects) for an intervention compared to an alternative treatment strategy. The Registry focuses on a subset of CEAs, called cost-utility analyses that considers both quality of life and added life years as the benefits achieved. undefined
National Health Services Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination is comprised of three databases; DARE, NHS EED and HTA. DARE contains 15,000 abstracts of systematic reviews including over 6,000 quality assessed reviews and details of all Cochrane reviews and protocols. NHS EED contains 24,000 abstracts of health economics papers including over 7,000 quality assessed economic evaluations. HTA brings together details of over 8,000 completed and ongoing health technology assessments from around the world.
Reports
ARCC Listening for Directions
ARCC held a Listening for Direction Exercise on February 2nd, 2011. This meeting brought together high level decision-makers and policy-makers from provincial governments, cancer agencies, cancer societies and other non-government cancer organizations for one day to discuss research priorities and directions related to applied cancer control research in Canada.
International Childhood Cancer Forum
ARCC contributed to the International Childhood Cancer Forum: Exploration and Setting Priorities for an Unmet Need in Bangladesh. The objective was to provide a forum for researchers, practitioners and decision-makers to discuss the landscape of childhood cancer in Bangladesh and to establish a preliminary agenda for 1) priorities for health services research to inform policy and practice; and 2) priorities for childhood cancer programs and services across the country.
CAYACS (Childhood, Adolescent, Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Research Program)
CAYACS is a British Columbia population-based research program examining the long term outcomes of survivors of cancer diagnosed under age 25 in British Columbia, Canada. The research program is conducting a series of epidemiologic, clinical, and health services studies relating to survivorship issues in multiple domains (health, education, resource use etc). Maps illustrating prevalence and health service utilization information are currently available.
Useful Papers
Bansback N, Tsuchiya A, Brazier J, Anis A (2012) Canadian Valuation of EQ-5D Health States: Preliminary Value Set and Considerations for Future Valuation Studies. PLoS ONE 7(2): e31115.
Background
The EQ-5D is a preference based instrument which provides a description of a respondent’s health status, and an empirically derived value for that health state often from a representative sample of the general population. It is commonly used to derive Quality Adjusted Life Year calculations (QALY) in economic evaluations. However, values for health states have been found to differ between countries. The objective of this study was to develop a set of values for the EQ-5D health states for use in Canada.
Methods
Values for 48 different EQ-5D health states were elicited using the Time Trade Off (TTO) via a web survey in English. A random effect model was fitted to the data to estimate values for all 243 health states of the EQ-5D. Various model specifications were explored. Comparisons with EQ-5D values from the UK and US were made. Sensitivity analysis explored different transformations of values worse than dead, and exclusion criteria of subjects.
Results
The final model was estimated from the values of 1145 subjects with socio-demographics broadly representative of Canadian general population with the exception of Quebec. This yielded a good fit with observed TTO values, with an overall R2 of 0.403 and a mean absolute error of 0.044.
Conclusion
A preference-weight algorithm for Canadian studies that include the EQ-5D is developed. The primary limitations regarded the representativeness of the final sample, given the language used (English only), the method of recruitment, and the difficulty in the task. Insights into potential issues for conducting valuation studies in countries as large and diverse as Canada are gained.
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