The IPECAD Alzheimer’s disease model (Green et al, 2019) has been developed by the IPECAD Modelling Group as a framework to model disease progression across Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and to assess the costs and outcomes associated with the condition, and the cost-effectiveness of interventions for people affected by AD, using the scenario of a future disease modifying therapies (DMT) for people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD.
A description of the model (version 1.0) entitled “Assessing cost-effectiveness of early intervention in Alzheimer’s disease: An open-source modeling framework” is published open-access in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia: the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association (Alzheimers Dement 2019 Oct;15(10):1309-1321 doi: 10.1016/j.jalz.2019.05.004 or PubMed).
You can use this open-source model for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License.
We host a version history developed by the IPECAD Modelling Group below.
We provide a listing of self-reported external applications of the model below to endorse transparency.
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External applications
Citations of Green et al. Alzheimers Dement. 2019 Oct;15(10):1309-1321: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31402324/#citedby
2021 Aug 5: IPECAD open-source model was described in a cross-comparison to other models by ICER. https://icer.org/news-insights/press-releases/icer-publishes-final-evidence-report-and-policy-recommendations-on-aducanumab-for-alzheimers-disease/
2020 October: Jun H, Cho SK, Aliyev ER, Mattke S, Suen SC. How Much Value Would a Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease Offer? Cost-Effectiveness Thresholds for Pricing a Disease-Modifying Therapy. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2020 Dec 3. doi: 10.2174/1567205017666201203121907. PMID: 33272181
Activities
2022: IPECAD open-source model has been adjusted and applied in 2 studies entitled “The value of maintaining cognition in patients with mild cognitive impairment: the innovation headroom and potential cost-effectiveness of roflumilast” and “Potential cost-effectiveness of individualized medicine in prodromal Alzheimer’s disease by demographic, clinical and cerebrospinal fluid proteomics factors”. Both studies are currently submitted for publication. Detailed will be provided soon.
2021 Nov 8: present IPECAD open-source model on ISPOR Open Source Models journal club.
2020 October (advisory): Bengt Winblad has provided general advise for Grifols International – AMBAR commercial Development who have requested the IPECAD model version 1.0.
2020 May-August (education): Ron Handels guided two master students who have applied the IPECAD model version 1.0 in their internship (Health, Policy and Management master’s program at Maastricht University).
2019 Oct (publication): publication on IPECAD open-sourcemodel 1.0 (Alzheimers Dement. 2019 Oct;15(10):1309-1321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2019.05.004).
2019 Jul 1 (conference): oral presentation at AAIC conference on IPECAD open-source model. Colin Green, Ron Handels, Anders Gustavsson, Anders Wimo, Anders Skoldunger, Bengt Winblad, Linus Jonsson. O5-08-04: A NEW OPEN-SOURCE MODELING FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS COST EFFECTIVENESS OF EARLY INTERVENTION IN ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE. First published: 01 July 2019. https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1016/j.jalz.2019.06.4879
2018 Feb 15 (conference): Colin green presented a first draft of the model on the IPECAD conference (8th edition).
2017 May 01 (funding): Ron Handels received support by the Dutch Alzheimer Association (Alzheimer Netherlands) for travel costs for meetings to discuss the IPECAD open-source model. Link: https://www.alzheimer-nederland.nl/onderzoek/fellowships.
2016 June 16: initial discussion on IPECAD open-source model.
Version history
Version 1.2.1
12 January 2023
An individual patient-level microsimulation version of the IPECAD open-source model was build. This version 1.2.1 attempts to replicate the result of version 1.0, except for differences due to stochastic variation introduced by the individual patient-level simulation. For this version we attempted to apply several aspects of the following coding framework: Alarid-Escudero, F., Krijkamp, E.M., Pechlivanoglou, P. et al. A Need for Change! A Coding Framework for Improving Transparency in Decision Modeling. PharmacoEconomics 37, 1329–1339 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-019-00837-x
This version was developed as part of the work for 2 studies entitled “The value of maintaining cognition in patients with mild cognitive impairment: the innovation headroom and potential cost-effectiveness of roflumilast” and “Potential cost-effectiveness of individualized medicine in prodromal Alzheimer’s disease by demographic, clinical and cerebrospinal fluid proteomics factors”. A basic version without the study specific features is made available here as version 1.2.1.
A detailed documented code is planned to be provided as part of version 1.2.2 in the future.
Bug fixes
none
Version 1.1
1 March 2021
This version was developed as part of the IPECAD modelling workshop challenge 2020 (see https://ipecadgroup.wordpress.com/workshop/). Alongside the Excel version a version was coded in R.
Miscellaneous
- Addition of input (functionality) on ‘Treatment Discontinuation (waning)’. For Excel version see sheet ‘Inputs’ cell ‘D11’ is 10% corresponding to text “Treatment discontinuation/waning (per year)”.
- Additional reporting by states / disease stages including use of ‘half-cylce correction’ [prior version 1.0 did not report results on disease progression using half-cycle correcction]. For Excel version see for example sheet “Usual Care Cohort” cell ‘BV9’.
- Included reporting for results and CEA outputs over a 10-year time horizon. For Excel version see additional tables/reporting on sheets “Usual Care Cohort” and “Treatment Cohort” e.g. from cell ‘DJ19’, and also in sheet “Results” e.g. from cells ‘H11’ & ‘BJ49’.
- Includes additional reporting, on time (person years) in disease stages, with half-cycle correction; to facilitate reporting of trace by severity stage over time. For Excel version see for example in sheet “Outputs” cells ‘X2’ and ‘AW2’.
Bug fixes
none
Version 1.0
8 August 2019
Development group
Anders Gustavsson (Quantify Research, Sweden; Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Colin Green (Biogen UK; University of Exeter, UK; Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Ron Handels (Maastricht University, Netherlands; Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Will Herring (RTI Health Solutions, U.S.) (2021-now)
Linus Jönsson (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Anders Sköldunger (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Anders Wimo (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Bengt Winblad (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2016-now)
Former member:
Andreas Karlson (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) (2019-2020)
IPECAD 