Compared with their older counterparts, newer Non-insulin antidiabetic drugs are cost effective for treating type 2 diabetes mellitus and show great promise in treating diabetes and its complications through indirect and direct effects. An overview of the recent findings in the cost-effectiveness literature and the underlying methodological choices in the decision-analytical models could aid decision makers in prioritisation.

This review found that as comparators, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors were the favoured classes. Within these classes, semaglutide (injectable or oral) and empagliflozin were the favoured products, respectively. It is challenging to provide conclusions on the cost-effective option among these products due to different underlying methodological choices, sponsorship bias, and outdated information populating the model.

Decision makers face several difficulties when prioritising between the newer Non-insulin antidiabetic drug. The field of cost-effectiveness analyses in type 2 diabetes mellitus could benefit from using modelling practices, mainly treatment switch assumptions and risk equations, that better align with real-world practice and contemporary follow-up data for modelling treatment effects over time.