Objectives: To quantify and characterise the usage of expanded access (EA) data in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisals (TAs). EA offers patients who are ineligible for clinical trials or registered treatment options, access to investigational therapies. Although EA programmes are increasingly used to collect real-world data, it is unknown if and how these date are used in NICE health technology assessments.
Design: Cross-sectional study of NICE appraisals (2010-2020). We automatically downloaded and screened all available appraisal documentation on NICE website (over 8500 documents), searching for EA-related terms. Two reviewers independently labelled the EA usage by disease area, and whether it was used to inform safety, efficacy and/or resource use. We qualitatively describe the five appraisals with the most occurrences of EA-related terms.
Primary outcome measure: Number of TAs that used EA data to inform safety, efficacy and/or resource use analyses.
Results: In 54.2% (206/380 appraisals), at least one reference to EA was made. 21.1% (80/380) of the TAs used EA data to inform safety (n=43), efficacy (n=47) and/or resource use (n=52). The number of TAs that use EA data remained stable over time, and the extent of EA data utilisation varied by disease area (p=0.001).
Conclusion: NICE uses EA data in over one in five appraisals. In synthesis with evidence from well-controlled trials, data collected from EA programmes may meaningfully inform cost-effectiveness modelling.
Keywords: general medicine (see internal medicine); health economics; health policy.
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