Evaluating the Preferences and Willingness-to-Pay for Oral Antidiabetic Drugs Among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in China: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Purpose To quantify the preferences for an oral antidiabetic drug (OAD) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in China. Methods A discrete choice experiment (DCE) with hypothetical OAD profiles was performed among patients with T2DM recruited from both online and offline sources. Each patient completed 12 DCE choice tasks. The attributes, elicited through mixed methods, include blood glucose level decrease, blood glucose level stability, frequency of medication, gastrointestinal side effects, dose adjustment and out-of-pocket expense. The conditional logit regression model was used to analyze the data. Patients’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) was also calculated. Subgroup analyses based on patient characteristics were also conducted. Results A total of 741 respondents were included in the analysis sample, covering 456 respondents online and 285 offline. The result showed that all attributes and levels were statistically significant, except one level “dose adjustment required for patients with hepatic or renal insufficiency” in the attribute of dose adjustment. WTP results showed that patients were willing to pay 12.06 and 23.20 yuan, respectively to reduce the frequency of medication from “once per day” and “three times per day” to “once every 2 weeks”, respectively. Subgroup analyses showed that the frequency of medication (once versus two to three times per day) had the largest impact and influenced most coefficient estimates. Conclusion The results suggest that Chinese patients with T2DM prioritized better efficacy, less frequency of medication, lower gastrointestinal side effects, no dose adjustment required for patients with hepatic or renal insufficiency, and less out-of-pocket expense of OAD treatment.