PRISMA EconEval Development of new reporting guidance for systematic reviews of health economic evaluations

A systematic review summarizes the available evidence and provides an unbiased, reliable assessment of the current state of knowledge, essential for making evidence-based decisions. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 statement was designed to enhance the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses – primarily of the effects of interventions, though also applicable to systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies with a different objective – by improving their clarity, consistency, transparency, quality, and overall value.

Systematic reviews of health economic evaluations differ from other systematic reviews in their approach to reporting key methodological steps, including methods for study selection, data extraction and presentation, and the assessment of quality and relevance. Such reviews consider health economic evaluations, which compare the effects of different healthcare interventions on economic outcomes (e.g. incremental cost-effectiveness ratios, net monetary benefits, etc.). Additionally, they differ in their potential for combining costs, preference-based health-related quality of life outcomes, and cost-effectiveness outcomes across studies.

A literature search in PubMed Central from January 1, 2015, to March 25, 2017 found 202 systematic reviews of health economic evaluations listed within this 27-month period. Extending the search to other databases and grey literature and from 2017 to date is likely to increase this number substantially. These reviews lack common standards for reporting quality, highlighting the need for an additional reporting guideline specifically for systematic reviews of health economic evaluations.

The 'Development of new reporting guidance for systematic reviews of health economic evaluations (PRISMA-EconEval)' project was initiated to address this gap. A core international multidisciplinary working group, including PRISMA members, authors, journal editors, and stakeholders, will identify and extract candidate reporting items from various sources. Such sources include this scoping review of the methodological literature on the reporting of systematic reviews of health economic evaluations together with a purposive sample of previous systematic reviews of health economic evaluations. They will refine these items to improve reporting quality. A multi-round online Delphi survey will then evaluate these items with input from academic researchers, specifically health economists (including authors of systematic reviews of health economic evaluations) and systematic review methodologists, journal editors, reporting guideline developers, information specialists, and stakeholders, including health care decision-makers, health research funders, and patient and public representatives. The development of common reference standards for reporting should enhance completeness, transparency and structure in the reporting of systematic reviews of health economic evaluations and generate user-friendly tools for authors, editors, peer-reviewers and stakeholders that facilitate reporting.