Characterising and appraising the methods

The role of patient preferences is becoming progressively more important throughout the medical product life cycle (MPLC). The pharmaceutical industry, regulatory authorities, and health technology assessment (HTA) bodies and payers are placing increasing importance on the inclusion of patient preferences in medical decision- making, especially in benefit-risk (B-R) assessment. In PREFER Work Package (WP) 2.4, a total of 32 patient preference exploration (qualitative) and elicitation (quantitative) methods were identified. However, there is no comprehensive overview of how these methods compare to one another, which are most suitable for particular stages in the MPLC, or which are most appropriate for unique study design considerations. As the role of patient preference information in decision-making increases, it is vital that decision-makers are able to select the most appropriate methods suitable for their requirements. This task (WP 2.6) aims to (1) develop criteria by which to characterise and appraise 32 patient preference elicitation and exploration methods (identified in WP 2.4) and (2) to determine weights for these criteria. These criteria and evaluation scales will be used to assess the performance of the methods on these criteria in WP 2.7, generating a gap analysis for criteria performance measures that are unknown or uncertain. The best performing methods under these criteria will be tested and assessed during the empirical case studies (WP3) and simulation studies (WP 2.8).