Cost effectiveness of personalized treatment in women with early breast cancer: the application of OncotypeDX and Adjuvant! Online to guide adjuvant chemotherapy in Austria

A Breast Cancer Outcomes model was developed at the ONCOTYROL research center to evaluate personalized test-treatment strategies in Austria. The goal was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a new 21-gene assay (ODX) when used in conjunction with the Adjuvant! Online (AO) decision aid to support personalized decisions about use of adjuvant chemotherapy in early-stage breast cancer patients in Austria. We applied a validated discrete-event-simulation model to a hypothetical cohort of 50 years old women over a lifetime horizon. The test-treatment strategies of interest were defined using three-letter acronyms. The first (second, third) letter indicates whether patients with a low (intermediate, high) risk according to AO were tested using ODX (Y yes, N no). The main outcomes were life-years gained, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), costs and cost effectiveness. Robustness of the results was tested in sensitivity analyses. Results were compared to a Canadian analysis conducted by the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA). Five of eight strategies were dominated (i.e., more costly and less effective: NNY, NYN, YNN, YNY, YYN). The base-case analysis shows that YYY (ODX provided to all patients) is the most effective strategy and is cost effective with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of 15,700 EUR per QALY gained. These results are sensitive to changes in the probabilities of distant recurrence, age and costs of chemotherapy. The results of the base-case analysis were comparable to the THETA results. Based on our analyses, using ODX in addition to AO is effective and cost effective in all women in Austria. The development of future genetic tests may require alternative or additional test-treatment strategies to be evaluated. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-015-1440-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.