Health technology assessment (HTA) is a key tool used to allocate health care funding. A critical aspect of HTA is the performance of economic evaluations that compare the costs and outcomes for competing therapies; these typically rely on data from clinical trials. For early prostate cancer, this represents a challenge, as long-term survival and quality-of-life effects-key outcomes in such evaluations-may require a decade or more of follow-up. Thus, identification of early or intermediate measures of benefit is critical. Systematic reviews of economic evaluations in prostate cancer show that understanding the links between intermediate and final outcomes is important for confidence in assessments of what represents value for money. This highlights the importance of efforts to identify and validate intermediate clinical endpoints for use in determining clinical benefit, and hence value for money, in early prostate cancer. PATIENT SUMMARY: As the costs of providing care rise, the challenge is to ensure that we achieve value for money. In this brief review, we note the importance of clinical trial data in understanding what represents value for money and we highlight current efforts to identify measures that can be used to make decisions on treatment funding sooner.
Keywords: Early; Health technology assessment; Localised; Prostate cancer.
Copyright © 2018 European Association of Urology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.