title: Is There a European View on Health Economic Evaluations? Results from a Synopsis of Methodological Guidelines Used in the EUnetHTA Partner Countries.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objectives of this study were to review current methodological guidelines for economic evaluations of all types of technologies in the 33 countries with organizations involved in the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA), and to provide a general framework for economic evaluation at a European level.
  
  
  METHODS
  Methodological guidelines for health economic evaluations used by EUnetHTA partners were collected through a survey. Information from each guideline was extracted using a pre-tested extraction template. On the basis of the extracted information, a summary describing the methods used by the EUnetHTA countries was written for each methodological item. General recommendations were formulated for methodological issues where the guidelines of the EUnetHTA partners were in agreement or where the usefulness of economic evaluations may be increased by presenting the results in a specific way.
  
  
  RESULTS
  At least one contact person from all 33 EUnetHTA countries (100 %) responded to the survey. In total, the review included 51 guidelines, representing 25 countries (eight countries had no methodological guideline for health economic evaluations). On the basis of the results of the extracted information from all 51 guidelines, EUnetHTA issued ten main recommendations for health economic evaluations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The presented review of methodological guidelines for health economic evaluations and the consequent recommendations will hopefully improve the comparability, transferability and overall usefulness of economic evaluations performed within EUnetHTA. Nevertheless, there are still methodological issues that need to be investigated further.
authors.affiliation: Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU), Box 3657, SE 103 59, Stockholm, Sweden. emelie.heintz@sbu.se.|Center for Medical Technology Assessment (CMT), Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden. emelie.heintz@sbu.se.
authors.forename: Emelie
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Heintz
authors.affiliation: Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG), Cologne, Germany. andreas.gerber-grote@iqwig.de.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gerber-Grote
authors.affiliation: Department of Economic and Public Health Evaluation, Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), Saint-Denis, France.
authors.forename: Salah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ghabri
authors.affiliation: Department of Economic and Public Health Evaluation, Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), Saint-Denis, France.
authors.forename: Francoise F
authors.initials: FF
authors.lastname: Hamers
authors.affiliation: Institute for Economic Research (IER), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Valentina Prevolnik
authors.initials: VP
authors.lastname: Rupel
authors.affiliation: Institute for Economic Research (IER), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Renata
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Slabe-Erker
authors.affiliation: Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU), Box 3657, SE 103 59, Stockholm, Sweden.|Center for Medical Technology Assessment (CMT), Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Davidson
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D005060:Europe; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical / Q000379:methods*