OBJECTIVES: Due to the notably difference of epidemiology and outcomes between Eastern and Western population with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), an important challenge is how useful those outcome deriving from diabetes models based on Western populations. Consequently, the principal aim of this study was to develop and validate a Health Policy Model (Chinese Outcomes Model for T2DM [COMT]) for supporting Chinese medical and health economic studies.

METHODS: The model is created to simulate a series of important complications of T2DM diabetes based on the latest Risk Equations for Complications Of type 2 Diabetes (RECODe), which was adjusted by adding the adjustment regulator to the linear predictor within the risk equation. The validity of the model was conducted by using a total of 171 validation outcomes from 7 studies in Eastern population and 10 studies in Western population.Concordance was tested by the best-fitting regression.

RESULTS: The slope coefficients of the best-fitting regression line between the predicted and corresponding observed actual outcomes was 0.9631, and the R was 0.8701. The slope and R of predictions were 0.9473 and 0.9272 in Eastern population and 1.0566 and 0.8863 in Western population, which showed more perfect agreement with observed values in Eastern population than the Western populations. The subset of macro-vascular and micro-vascular outcomes in Eastern population showed identical tendency (the slope coefficient was close to 1), and mortality outcomes showed a slightly tendency to overestimation (the slope coefficient was close to 0.9208). Some degree of underprediction of macro-vascular and micro-vascular endpoints and overprediction of mortality endpoint were found in Western population.

CONCLUSIONS: The COMT diabetes model simulated the long-term patient outcomes observed in Eastern Asian T2DM patients with a prediction accuracy. This study supports the COMT as a credible tool for Chinese health care decision makers.