Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Although patient and public involvement (PPI) is a key expectation of research within the UK, and increasingly embedded in health economic reporting standards, PPI informing health economics remains limited. Meaningful integration of PPI can enhance the relevance and impact of discrete choice experiments (DCEs) and economic models by ensuring attributes, outcomes, costs and methods reflect real-world experiences and priorities. Here, we describe the methods and impact of involving women with lived experience of pelvic organ prolapse (POP) in designing and refining a DCE and economic model as part of a wider Health Technology Assessment (HTA).
METHODS: Ten women with lived experience of POP were included in our Patient Advisory Group (PAG), including two public research team members, who assisted in governing the project from the perspective of patients. The public research team members supported the design of activities to engage other members of the PAG in a series of online meetings to discuss and shape the economic model and DCE. To facilitate discussions and elicit diverse patient perspectives, vignettes, online voting and ranking were used.
RESULTS: Involving public research team members greatly enhanced the design of both economic components, including: the combinations of non-surgical interventions for POP women may try; the care pathway for POP; the timing of treatment initiation; experiences of treatment switching and discontinuation; and attributes and levels for the DCE. The impact of involving the PAG was documented using the Public Involvement in Research Impact Toolkit (PIRIT) and relayed to the PAG periodically.
CONCLUSIONS: Involving women with a lived experience of POP in the design of both the DCE and economic model ensured that both components reflected patients’ experiences of care and treatments. Future studies could build on this approach to incorporate meaningful PPI into health economic components of HTAs.