OBJECTIVES: To understand the preferences of Swiss healthcare providers (HCPs) for attributes of pediatric hexavalent vaccines.
METHODS: A discrete-choice experiment was administered to 150 pediatricians and 40 nurses in Switzerland. Respondents were asked to make 12 choices between 2 hypothetical hexavalent pediatric vaccines defined by five attributes: type of device (prefilled vs. requiring reconstitution); percentage of children with protective antibody levels against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) at time of booster dose (11-12 months) (50% vs. 70% vs. 90%); packaging size (500 vs. 1,000 cm3); years on the market (<1 vs. 1-3 vs. >3 years); and time that the vaccine can stay at room temperature (6 vs. 3 days). Odds ratios and the conditional relative importance of attributes (the proportion of total utility gained by switching from the least to the most preferred levels of attributes, rescaled to sum to 100%) were calculated from random-parameters logit models.
RESULTS: HCPs almost never preferred a vaccine conferring 50% (OR 0.00, 95% CI 0.00-0.00) or 70% (OR 0.01, 95% CI 0.00-0.01) of children with protective Hib antibody levels when presented with a 90% seroprotection alternative. HCPs were nearly five times more likely to prefer a vaccine that was commercially available for >3 years compared to one available for <1 year (OR 4.76, 95% 1.87-7.65), nearly three times more likely to prefer prefilled syringes to reconstituted vaccines (OR 2.77, 95% CI: 1.39-4.15) and almost twice as likely to prefer smaller vs. larger packaging size (OR 1.89, 95% CI: 1.23-2.55). The OR for the time (3 vs 6 days) a vaccine can stay at room temperature was not significant. Seroprotection against Hib was the most important attribute (relative importance: 76.5%) followed by years on market (11.1%) and type of device (7.3%).
CONCLUSION: In this study, Hib seroprotection was the most important attribute of pediatric hexavalent vaccines among Swiss HCPs.
