Network Meta-Analysis for Decision-Making

Preface

1. Who Is This Book for?

This book is intended for anyone who has an interest in the synthesis, or ‘pooling’, of evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and particularly in the statistical methods for network meta-analysis. A standard meta-analysis is used to pool information from trials that compare two interventions, while network meta-analysis extends this to the comparison of any number of interventions.

Network meta-analysis is one of the core methodologies of what has been called comparative effectiveness research (Iglehart, 2009), and, in view of the prime role accorded to trial evidence over other forms of evidence on comparative efficacy, it might be considered to be the most important.

The core material in this book is largely based on a 3-day course that we have been running for several years. Based on the spectrum of participants we see on our course, we believe the book will engage a broad range of professionals and academics. Firstly, it should appeal to all statisticians who have an interest in evidence synthesis, whether from a methodological viewpoint or because they are involved in applied work arising from systematic reviews, including the work of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Secondly, the methods are an essential component of health technology assessment (HTA) and are routinely used in submissions not only to re-imbursement agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England but also, increasingly, to ...