OBJECTIVES : Health Technology Assessments may require modellers to identify existing economic evaluations for a range of jurisdictions quickly and in an unbiased way. We aimed to create an Evidence Map of cost-effectiveness model publications in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to facilitate this process.

METHODS : We searched the heoro.com database (www.heoro.com) for cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit models in RA published between 1960 and 24^th October 2018, and indexed the abstracts identified by the search to determine the publication date, jurisdiction, stage of disease, interventions assessed, type of economic evaluation and modelling perspective. We presented the results as an Evidence Map.

RESULTS : We found a total of 94 abstracts of relevant economic models across 20 countries. Of these abstracts, 63 reported cost-utility models and 21 were cost-effectiveness models, with the remainder being either protocols (4 abstracts) or literature reviews of economic models (9). Biological therapies were the most common interventions to be modelled, in particular adalimumab and etanercept (22 abstracts each), infliximab (18), rituximab (15), abatacept (9), certolizumab and tocilizumab (5 each) and golimumab (3). The UK was the most frequent location for the studies, with 39 abstracts, followed by the Netherlands (23), Germany (7), Italy (5) and France (4). The stage of disease was unclear in 37 abstracts but populations who were biological-naïve (28 abstracts) or who had early RA (14) were frequently modelled. More models had a healthcare or payer (53) than a societal perspective (26).

CONCLUSIONS : Economic evaluations in RA that were published in PubMed have mainly been developed for biological therapies in European jurisdictions, in particular the UK, reflecting the importance of health technology assessments to assess new interventions in these countries. For a chronic, disabling condition that often affects working-age adults, the relatively small number of models that had a societal perspective is surprising.