This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 602270(EQUIPT)
We will adapt the UK ROI tool v1.0 to reflect the needs of decision makers in four sample European countries (Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain). We will follow the standard (and often best practice) guidelines [ref] to build the models and we will use agreed quality appraisal checklists standardised across all sample countries. With input from the results of the information collection exercise in WP1, we will consider the perspective, structure, time horizons, key disease areas and level of importance of the ROI indicators to inform the adaptation of the model.
Using a Markov process we will take into account: background quit rate; differential risk of death for smokers and former smokers; clinical data relating to attributable risk for lung cancer, coronary heart disease, COPD, myocardial infarction and stroke. We will project the incidence of smoking-attributable disease in the population and then project the costs of treatment and expected number of QALYs for the population. We will follow standard definitions to estimate different ROI indicators and run rigorous sensitivity analyses and estimates of uncertainty.
A technical report will be prepared to document the model building process, the parameters used and the extent of uncertainty around ROI tool indicators.
A ROI v2.0 model will be created in Microsoft Excel for each of the four sample countries, and accessibility will be broadened with user-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUI).
The first drafts of the country-specific ROI v2.0 models will be piloted with relevant stakeholders to market test the relevance and applicability of the product. In the pilot stage, all interviewed stakeholders (WP1) will be invited to use the tool and to consider the relevance of policy recommendations coming from it in their own contexts. This feedback will be used to revise the tool further. In WP1 we aimed to involve the views of the stakeholders to identify their needs towards such a product. Here, we apply a variant of ‘before and after’ study design to assess whether their needs have been fulfilled. Central to this task is the notion that meeting stakeholders’ needs for a product will ensure its wider usage (Rogers 2003).
