Published Mar 31, 2014

Paris, France - While new drugs are always being developed, a wide range of treatments are currently available for depression. These treatments vary in terms of efficacy, safety, and price. Many patients receive a combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments, and switch between different antidepressants before achieving recovery. However, previous economic models in depression were generally designed to compare antidepressants over a short-term. A group of health economists and clinical experts from Europe and Canada developed a new model for the economic evaluation of more complex treatment strategies, over the long-term. In the article, “Core Discrete Event Simulation Model for the Evaluation of Health Care Technologies in Major Depressive Disorder,” published in Value in Health, the researchers describe the initial version of the model including short- and long-term clinical events (partial response, remission, relapse, recovery and recurrence), adverse events, and treatment changes (titration, switch, addition, discontinuation) over up to 5 years. Among possible utilizations of this model, decision makers and payers can use it to determine the optimal position of different treatments in order to maximize health gains under a budget constraint. Anne-Lise Vataire, MSc, from Creativ-Ceutical in Paris, France, the lead-author of the study states: “By making the code open-source, we hope to foster the research community to develop, implement and share new data and functions in order to populate, enhance and validate the model. This approach also aims at transparency and at facilitating the utilization of the model by researchers from academia, health technology assessment agencies or the industry.” The code and detailed technical information are available atwww.open-model-mdd.org.

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