OBJECTIVES: A number of voices have advocated for programs to be made open-source when health economic (HE) models are published. This can lead to greater transparency and credibility, as well as reduced duplication of work. The objective of this research was to provide an overview of currently available open-source models.

METHODS: We performed a search in Medline to identify currently available open-source models. The search covered HE models and epidemiological models, as those are often extended with addition of HE outcomes. We extracted information about studied disease, model type, modelling methods used and whether a user-friendly interface was provided with the codes.

RESULTS: We identified 12 open-source models, including 4 cost-effectiveness, 3 costing and 5 epidemiological models. Technical approaches included Markov models, agent-based models, similarity-search model, and decision tree combined with transmission dynamic model . Four papers reported that a user-friendly interface has been developed. The most frequently studied diseases were influenza (considered in three papers) and cancer (two papers). All the models were published in last ten years.

CONCLUSIONS: Although the value of open-source approaches is getting increasingly recognized among health economists, there are still not many HE models with open-source codes. Currently available open-source models tend to be more complex than average HE models, which suggests there is recognition among authors that making codes open-source is important for the credibility of complex models.