DECISION-MAKING ALIGNED WITH RAPID-CYCLE EVALUATION IN HEALTH CARE

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Health Technology Assessment
• Evidence-Based Practice

Background:

• Real-time electronic healthcare data enables rapid-cycle evaluation (RCE) of health technologies and programs.
• Aligning decision-making with RCE stages optimizes the utility and impact of rapid results.
• Informed adoption decisions require considering program effect size alongside costs, sustainability, and adoption likelihood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To align decision-making processes with rapid-cycle evaluation (RCE) stages.
• To optimize the usefulness and impact of rapid results from RCE.
• To provide guidelines for evidence thresholds in incremental decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Examined past use of scientific evidence for complex interventions using case studies and drug safety monitoring.
• Clarified how RCE influences policy decisions.
• Developed the RAPID framework to synchronize decision-maker activities with RCE stages.

Main Results:

• RCE provides early effectiveness evidence, supporting a stepped decision-making approach with regularly updated information.
• RCE facilitates identification of trends in adjusted effect size and allows for midstream program or evaluation adaptation.
• The 5-step RAPID approach, using accumulating evidence, can enhance policymakers' confidence in expedited decisions.

Conclusions:

• Rapid-cycle evaluation enables a step-wise approach to health technology assessment (HTA) decision-making.
• Gradually emerging evidence from RCE reduces delays common with traditional one-time evaluations.
• This approach optimizes HTA decision-making by integrating evidence as it becomes available.