Economic evaluations of vaccines in Canada: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: This study aims to summarise and describe the evolution of published economic evaluations of vaccines in Canada, thereby outlining the current state of this expanding and meaningful research. METHODS: Using Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review framework we assembled relevant research from both academic and grey literature. Following abstract and full-text review we identified 60 articles to be included in the final analysis. RESULTS: We found that since 1988 there has been a steady increase in the number of economic evaluations on vaccines in Canada. Many of these studies focus on the more recently licensed vaccines, such as influenza (16.7%), human papillomavirus (15.0%) and pneumococcal disease (15.0%). Since 2010 economic evaluations of vaccines have shown increased adherence to economic evaluation guidelines (OR = 4.6, CI 1.33, 18.7), suggesting there has been improvement in the consistency and transparency of these studies. However, there remains room for improvement, for instance, we found evidence that studies who stated a conflict of interest are more likely to assert the vaccine of interest was cost-effective (OR = 7.4; CI 1.04, 17.8). Furthermore, most reports use static models that do not consider herd immunity, and only a few evaluate vaccines post-implementation (ex-post) and traveller’s vaccinations. CONCLUSION: Researchers should examine identified research gaps and continue to improve standardization and transparency when reporting to ensure economic evaluations of vaccines best meet the needs of policy-makers, other researchers and the public. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12962-017-0069-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.