Apples and oranges in the context of indirect treatment comparisons

At this year’s ISPOR conference, I had the privilege of joining Shannon Cope (PRECISIONheor), Jeroen Paul Jansen (University of California San Francisco), Harlan Campbell (University of British Columbia) and Hwee-Lin Wee (National University of Singapore) in presenting a Spotlight Session about “Apples and oranges in the context of anchored indirect treatment comparisons – Is there more to it than effect modifiers?”.

The session addressed the estimation of marginal, but covariate-adjusted, treatment effects. Particular focus was placed on indirect treatment comparisons. In this context, “marginalization” or “standardization” is important to compare compatible treatment effects across studies.

Following the session, I am happy to share two new papers. The first article, based on Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis, shows that model-based standardization can be performed using multiple imputation techniques.

The second article is a short discussion paper, touching upon aspects that were covered during the session: considerations when deciding on a weighting (e.g. MAIC) versus an outcome modelling approach (e.g. STC, G-computation): Both articles are co-authored with Gianluca Baio (University College London) and Anna Heath (Hospital for Sick Children).