A review of methodological aspects of economic evaluations used in NICE assessments for treatments in metastatic breast cancer

Methodological choices need to be made during model development. These choices can influence the outcome of a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) assessment. This review aims to identify, assess, and describe possible trends within the methodological aspects of economic evaluations used in NICE assessments of treatments for metastatic breast cancer (mBC). The NICE website was searched to identify technology appraisals submitted between 1 January 2009, and 31 December 2023. In this review methodological aspects are analyzed and discussed in three clusters – input data, model settings, and model outcomes – across the following characteristics: clinical trial information, quality-of-life measures, treatments used, model structure, health states, time horizon, threshold applied, and the NICE recommendations. This review provides a reference for stakeholders who want to understand previous NICE assessments of treatments for mBC, and the settings used in those, which can optimize decisions during model development. Uniformity in the methodological choices made during model development and the economic evaluations can increase transparency, increase comparability, and reduce complexity of the NICE assessment.