The Evolution of Meta-Analyses

Evidence synthesis is increasingly common in health technology assessments (HTAs). The question of how one treatment compares relative to another is usually assessed via randomized controlled trials (RCTs). One familiar form of evidence synthesis is meta-analysis, defined as “the statistical analysis of a large collection of individual studies for the purposes of integrating the findings” or “a statistical analysis that combines or integrates the results of several independent clinical trials considered by the analyst to be ‘combinable’” [1,2].