Background: Patients and clinicians are often required to make tradeoffs between the relative benefits and harms of multiple treatment options. Combining network meta-analysis results with user preferences can be useful when choosing among several treatment alternatives.
Objective: Using cholesterol-lowering statin drugs as a case study, we aimed to determine whether an interactive web-based platform that combines network meta-analysis findings with patient preferences had an effect on the decision-making process in a general population sample.
Method: This was a pilot parallel randomized controlled trial. We used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to recruit adults residing in the United States. A total of 349 participants were randomly allocated to view either the interactive tool (intervention) or a series of bar charts (control). The primary endpoint was decisional conflict, and secondary endpoints included decision self-efficacy, preparation for decision making, and the overall ranking of statins.
Results: A total of 258 participants completed the trial and were included in the analysis. On the primary outcome, participants randomized to the interactive tool had significantly lower levels of decisional conflict than those in the control group (difference, -8.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], -12.96 to -4.11 on a 100-point scale; P = 0.001). They also appeared to have higher levels of preparation for decision making (difference, 4.19; 95% CI, -0.24 to 8.63 on a 100-point scale; P = 0.031). No difference was found for decision self-efficacy, although groups were statistically significantly different in how they ranked different statins.
Conclusion: The findings of our proof-of-concept evaluation suggest that an interactive web-based tool combining published clinical evidence with individual preferences can reduce decisional conflict and better prepare individuals for decision making.
Keywords: decision aid; decision making; network meta-analysis; patient preferences; statins.