Articles

Development of the WHO-INTEGRATE evidence-to-decision framework: an overview of systematic reviews of decision criteria for health decision-making

Decision-making in public health and health policy is complex and requires careful deliberation of many and sometimes conflicting normative and technical criteria. Several approaches and tools, such as multi-c...

Authors: J. M. Stratil, R. Baltussen, I. Scheel, A. Nacken and E. A. Rehfuess

Evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of dexrazoxane for the prevention of anthracycline-related cardiotoxicity in children with sarcoma and haematologic malignancies: a European perspective

Anthracycline-treated childhood cancer survivors are at higher risk of cardiotoxicity, especially with cumulative doses received above 250 mg/m². Dexrazoxane is the only option recommended for cardiotoxicity prev...

Authors: Sarah Dewilde, Kevin Carroll, Emilia Nivelle and James Sawyer

Correction to: Systematic review and meta-analysis of public hospital efficiency studies in Gulf region and selected countries in similar settings

Please note that following publication of the original article [1], two errors have been flagged by the authors. Firstly, the article has been processed with the wrong article type: it is not a ‘Review’, but r...

Authors: Ahmed D. Alatawi, Sayem Ahmed, Louis Niessen and Jahangir Khan

Cost-effectiveness analysis of imaging surveillance in stage II and III extremity soft tissue sarcoma: an Australian perspective

Surveillance imaging is used to detect local and/or distant recurrence following primary treatment of localised soft tissue sarcoma (STS), however evidence supporting optimal surveillance modality or frequency...

Authors: Susie Bae, Jonathan Karnon, Glenis Crane, Taryn Bessen, Jayesh Desai, Phillip Crowe and Susan Neuhaus

Ranking of Iranian provinces based on healthcare infrastructures: before and after implementation of Health Transformation Plan

Health Transformation Plan (HTP) was occurred in 2014 to improve access and equity and reduce out of pocket payments in Iranian Health Care System. In this regard the aim of this study is evaluating and rankin...

Authors: Payam Shojaei, Najmeh bordbar, Arash Ghanbarzadegan, Maryam Najibi and Peivand Bastani

Technical efficiency of provincial public healthcare in South Africa

Forty-nine million people or 83 per cent of the entire population of 59 million rely on the public healthcare system in South Africa. Coupled with a shortage of medical professionals, high migration, inequalit...

Authors: Victor Ngobeni, Marthinus C. Breitenbach and Goodness C. Aye

Cost-effectiveness analysis of pembrolizumab compared to standard of care as first line treatment for patients with advanced melanoma in Hong Kong

Pembrolizumab has been shown to improve overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) compared to ipilimumab in patients with ipilimumab-naïve advanced melanoma; however, there are no published dat...

Authors: Herbert H. Loong, Carlos K. H. Wong, Linda K. S. Leung, S. C. Tan, Jason Jen, Mary Y. K. Lee, Raquel Aguiar-Ibáñez and Jingshu Wang

Health economic evaluation of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for hepatocellular carcinoma: a systematic review

Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is a novel noninvasive treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma. SBRT can achieve effective local control, but it requires a relatively high input of resources; this systema...

Authors: Haiyin Wang, Chunlin Jin, Liang Fang, Hui Sun, Wendi Cheng and Shanlian HU

Differential discounting in the economic evaluation of healthcare programs

The question of appropriate discount rates in health economic evaluations has been a point of continuous scientific debate. Today, it is widely accepted that, under certain conditions regarding the social obje...

Authors: Jürgen John, Florian Koerber and Mareike Schad

A paradoxical situation in regressivity or progressivity of out of pocket payment for health care: which one is a matter of the health policy maker’s decision to intervention?

Equity in health financing as one main aspect of health equity plays an essential role on the path toward universal health coverage. Out of pocket payment (OOP), a source with high share to total health expend...

Authors: Mohsen Bayati, Mohammad Hossein Mehrolhassani and Vahid Yazdi-Feyzabadi

Abiraterone acetate and docetaxel with androgen deprivation therapy in high-volume metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer in China: an indirect treatment comparison and cost analysis

To conduct an indirect treatment comparison of patients with high-volume mHSPC and a cost analysis between Abi-ADT and Doc-ADT therapies in China.

Authors: Xin Hu, Shuli Qu, Xingxing Yao, Chaoyun Li, Yanjun Liu and Jianye Wang

Improving access to antiretrovirals in China: economic analyses of dolutegravir in HIV-1 patients

The World Health Organisation recommended dolutegravir (DTG)-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens are available but not reimbursed through the public reimbursement system in China. The objective of this...

Authors: Yogesh Suresh Punekar, Na Guo, Gabriel Tremblay, James Piercy, Tim Holbrook and Benjamin Young

Drug utilization and cost associated with inflammatory bowel disease management in Saudi Arabia

There has been an increase in incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) outside the western countries. Treatment costs are an essential component for healthcare planning and priority setting...

Authors: Yazed AlRuthia, Othman Alharbi, Abdulrahman M. Aljebreen, Nahla A. Azzam, Majid A. Almadi, Ohud H. Bahari, Khalid A. Almalki, Abdulaziz T. Atham, Ahmed S. Alanazi, Maria Saeed, Baraa HajkhderMullaissa, Mohammad Alsenaidy and Bander Balkhi

When donor funding leaves: an interrupted time-series analysis of the impact of integrating direct HIV care and treatment into public health services in a region of Johannesburg

Early in South Africa’s HIV response, donor-funded organizations directly provided HIV treatment through Comprehensive HIV Care, Management and Treatment sites (CCMTs), using their own and government staff. Fr...

Authors: Naomi Lince-Deroche, Rahma Leuner, Gesine Meyer-Rath, Yogan Pillay and Lawrence Long

Cost-comparison analysis of a multiplatform tumour profiling service to guide advanced cancer treatment

Tumor profiling is increasingly used in advanced cancer patients to define treatment options, especially in refractory cases where no standard treatment is available. Caris Molecular Intelligence (CMI) is a mu...

Authors: Gilbert Spizzo, Uwe Siebert, Guenther Gastl, Andreas Voss, Klaus Schuster, Robert Leonard and Andreas Seeber

Effects of a reimbursement change and travel times on the delivery of private and public radiology services in Norway: a register-based longitudinal study of Norwegian claims data

The variation in the impact of the 2008 reimbursement change for Norwegian radiology providers, depending on the travel times to private and public providers in different municipalities, was examined. The acti...

Authors: Anastasia Mokienko

A framework for assessing the lifetime economic burden of congenital cytomegalovirus in the United States

In the United States (US), congenital cytomegalovirus infection (cCMVi) is a major cause of permanent disabilities and the most common etiology of non-genetic sensorineural hearing loss. Evaluations of prevent...

Authors: Aaron Lucas, Anushua Sinha, Karen B. Fowler, Deirdre Mladsi, Christine Barnett, Salome Samant and Laura Gibson

Understanding and using patient experiences as evidence in healthcare priority setting

In many countries, committees make priority-setting decisions in order to control healthcare costs. These decisions take into account relevant criteria, including clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, an...

Authors: Leah Rand, Michael Dunn, Ingrid Slade, Sheela Upadhyaya and Mark Sheehan

Cost-effectiveness of the use of the continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion pump versus daily multiple injections in type 1 diabetes adult patients at the Mexican Institute of Social Security

To estimate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of the use of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) therapy versus multiple daily injections (MDI) therapy in adult patients with type 1 di...

Authors: Svetlana V. Doubova, Stephane Roze, Aldo Ferreira-Hermosillo, Ricardo Pérez-Cuevas, Ricardo Gasca-Pineda, Casper Barsoe, Jonathan Baran, Brian Ichihara, Erick Gryzbowski, Kyla Jones and Juan E. Valencia

Patients’ out-of-pocket expenses analysis of presurgical teledermatology

This study undertakes an economic analysis of presurgical teledermatology from a patient perspective, comparing it with a conventional referral system. Store-and-forward teledermatology allows surgical plannin...

Authors: Felipa de Mello-Sampayo

Systematic review and meta-analysis of public hospital efficiency studies in Gulf region and selected countries in similar settings

The assessment of hospital efficiency is attracting interest worldwide, particularly in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The objective of this study was to review the literature on public hospital eff...

Authors: Ahmed Alatawi, Sayem Ahmed, Louis Niessen and Jahangir Khan

Costs of hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infections: an analysis on the effect of time-dependent exposures using routine and surveillance data

Hospital-acquired infections have not only gained increasing attention clinically, but also methodologically, as a time-varying exposure. While methods to appropriately estimate extra length of stay (LOS) have...

Authors: Thomas Heister, Martin Wolkewitz, Philip Hehn, Jan Wolff, Markus Dettenkofer, Hajo Grundmann and Klaus Kaier

Technical efficiency of public district hospitals in Bangladesh: a data envelopment analysis

District hospitals (DHs) provide secondary level of healthcare to a wide range of population in Bangladesh. Efficient utilization of resources in these secondary hospitals is essential for delivering health se...

Authors: Sayem Ahmed, Md. Zahid Hasan, Samia Laokri, Zerin Jannat, Mohammad Wahid Ahmed, Farzana Dorin, Veronica Vargas and Jahangir A. M. Khan

Cost-effectiveness of a proactive, integrated primary care approach for community-dwelling frail older persons

The article reports on the cost-effectiveness of the proactive, integrated primary care program Finding and Follow-up of Frail older persons (FFF) compared with usual primary care for community-dwelling frail old...

Authors: Lotte Vestjens, Jane M. Cramm, Erwin Birnie and Anna P. Nieboer

Insulin glargine compared to neutral protamine Hagedorn (NPH) insulin in patients with type-2 diabetes uncontrolled with oral anti-diabetic agents alone in Hong Kong: a cost-effectiveness analysis

International guidelines recommend using basal insulin in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus if glycaemic target cannot be attained on non-insulin anti-diabetic drugs. Available choices of basal insulin in...

Authors: E. Lau, A. Salem, J. C. N. Chan, W. Y. So, A. Kong, M. Lamotte and A. Luk

A technique for approximating transition rates from published survival analyses

Quality-adjusted-life-years (QALYs) are used to concurrently quantify morbidity and mortality within a single parameter. For this reason, QALYs can facilitate the discussion of risks and benefits during patien...

Authors: Markian A. Pahuta, Joel Werier, Eugene K. Wai, Roy A. Patchell and Doug Coyle

Cost-effectiveness analysis of newborn pulse oximetry screening to detect critical congenital heart disease in Colombia

In many countries, economic assessments of the routine use of pulse oximetry in the detection of Critical Congenital Heart Disease (CCHD) at birth has not yet been carried out. CCHDs necessarily require medica...

Authors: Dario Londoño Trujillo, Nestor Fernando Sandoval Reyes, Alejandra Taborda Restrepo, Cindy Lorena Chamorro Velasquez, Maria Teresa Dominguez Torres, Sandra Vanessa Romero Ducuara, Gloria Amparo Troncoso Moreno, Hernan Camilo Aranguren Bello, Alejandra Fonseca Cuevas, Pablo Andres Bermudez Hernandez, Pablo Sandoval Trujillo and Rodolfo Jose Dennis

Model-based cost-effectiveness analysis of external beam radiation therapy for the treatment of localized prostate cancer: a systematic review

External beam radiotherapy is the recommended but expensive treatment option for localized prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men worldwide. A cost-effectiveness study is needed give...

Authors: Solomon Kibret Abreha

The allocation of resources in the care for patients with panic disorder in Germany: an excess cost analysis informing policy and science

Panic disorder is a mental disorder of high prevalence, which frequently co-occurs with agoraphobia. There is a lack of studies measuring excess costs of panic disorder patients with and without agoraphobia. W...

Authors: Christian Brettschneider, Florian Bleibler, Thomas S. Hiller, Alexander Konnopka, Jörg Breitbart, Jürgen Margraf, Jochen Gensichen and Hans-Helmut König

Effect of inappropriate admissions on hospitalization performance in county hospitals: a cross-sectional study in rural China

Inappropriate admissions cause excessive utilization of health services compared with outpatient services. However, it is still unclear whether inappropriate admissions cause excessive use of health services c...

Authors: Jing-jing Chang, Ying-chun Chen, Hong-xia Gao, Yan Zhang, Hao-miao Li, Dai Su, Di Jiang, Shi-han Lei, Xiao-mei Hu, Min Tan and Zhi-fang Chen

A one stop shop for cost-effectiveness evidence? Recommendations for improving Disease Control Priorities

Setting out a health benefits package (HBP) of interventions to be prioritised for funding is an important step towards achieving universal health coverage in low and middle income countries. The 3rd version o...

Authors: Matthias Arnold, Susan Griffin, Jessica Ochalek, Paul Revill and Simon Walker

The consequences of implementing non-invasive prenatal testing with cell-free foetal DNA for the detection of Down syndrome in the Spanish National Health Service: a cost-effectiveness analysis

DNA-based non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) using maternal blood constitutes an emerging technology for the detection of Down syndrome (DS). The aim of the study was to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis...

Authors: J. C. Bayón, E. Orruño, M. I. Portillo and J. Asua

Cost effectiveness and affordability of trastuzumab in sub-Saharan Africa for early stage HER2-positive breast cancer

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, the most common among women, and the most frequent cause of death among women in less developed regions. Trastuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody...

Authors: Noga Gershon, Yakir Berchenko, Peter S. Hall and Daniel A. Goldstein

Willingness to pay for one quality-adjusted life year in Iran

Recent years have witnessed a strong tendency to apply economic evidence as a guide for making health resource allocation decisions, especially those related to reimbursement policies. One such measure is the ...

Authors: Najmeh Moradi, Arash Rashidian, Shirin Nosratnejad, Alireza Olyaeemanesh, Marzieh Zanganeh and Leila Zarei

Correction to: Response to: Costs and savings associated with a pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments program in Saskatchewan

Following publication of the original article [1], these errors were flagged:

Authors: Ellen Rafferty, Mohsen Yaghoubi, Jeff Taylor and Marwa Farag

Willingness to pay for social health insurance and its determinants among public servants in Mekelle City, Northern Ethiopia: a mixed methods study

Owing to lack of adequate healthcare financing, access to at least the basic health services is still a problem in Ethiopia. With the intention of raising funds and ensuring universal health coverage, a mandat...

Authors: Meles Tekie Gidey, Gebremedhin Beedemariam Gebretekle, Mary-Ellen Hogan and Teferi Gedif Fenta

Cost-utility analysis of adjuvant imatinib treatment in patients with high risk of recurrence after gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) resection in Thailand

Many patients develop tumour recurrence within a few years after undergoing surgical resection of gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST). Adjuvant imatinib treatment is recommended for patients with high risk...

Authors: Thanaporn Bussabawalai, Kittiphong Thiboonboon and Yot Teerawattananon

Cost-effectiveness of antibiotic prophylaxis in elective cesarean section

The proportion of pregnant women delivered by cesarean section has increased steadily during the past three decades. The risk of infection is 10-fold augmented after elective cesarean section compared to vagin...

Authors: Markus H. Jansson, Yang Cao, Kerstin Nilsson, Per-Göran Larsson and Lars Hagberg

Medical advice-seeking behaviors based on transaction cost theory

Given the global trend of aging societies, medical expenditure has hit record highs in many countries. Because medical advice-seeking behaviors can affect the health of whole societies, how members of a societ...

Authors: Shih Han Lin and Tom M. Y. Lin

A comprehensive map of the evidence on the performance evaluation indicators of public hospitals: a scoping study and best fit framework synthesis

Key performance indicators are essential navigation tools for hospitals. They provide managers with valid information enabling them to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses and improve managerial per...

Authors: Kimia Pourmohammadi, Nahid Hatam, Payam Shojaei and Peivand Bastani

Cost effectiveness of HIV and sexual reproductive health interventions targeting sex workers: a systematic review

Sex workers have high incidences of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Although, interventions targeting sex workers have shown to be effective, evidence on which strategies are most cost-effective i...

Authors: Giulia Rinaldi, Aliasghar A. Kiadaliri and Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli

Response to: Costs and savings associated with a pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments program in Saskatchewan

Authors: Ellen Rafferty, Mohsen Yaghoubi, Jeff Taylor and Marwa Farag

Cost-effectiveness of a combined intervention of long lasting insecticidal nets and indoor residual spraying compared with each intervention alone for malaria prevention in Ethiopia

The effectiveness of long lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), for malaria prevention, have been established in several studies. However, the available evidence about the addit...

Authors: Alemayehu Hailu, Bernt Lindtjørn, Wakgari Deressa, Taye Gari, Eskindir Loha and Bjarne Robberstad

The acceptance and willingness to pay (WTP) for hypothetical dengue vaccine in Penang, Malaysia: a contingent valuation study

Malaysia has been experiencing an escalation in dengue cases since the past 5 years. As the dengue vaccine pipeline continues to develop steadily with strong public interests, this study had been sought to eli...

Authors: Hui Yee Yeo and Asrul Akmal Shafie

Cost-effectiveness of strategies to prevent road traffic injuries in eastern sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia: new results from WHO-CHOICE

Road safety has been receiving increased attention through the United Nations Decade of Action on Road Safety, and is also now specifically addressed in the sustainable development goals 3.6 and 11.2. In an ef...

Authors: Ambinintsoa H. Ralaidovy, Abdulgafoor M. Bachani, Jeremy A. Lauer, Taavi Lai and Dan Chisholm

Minor ailments, major problems: a critical appraisal of Rafferty et al. (2017)

Authors: Rudy Zimmer

Cost-effectiveness analysis of secukinumab versus other biologics and apremilast in the treatment of active Psoriatic arthritis: a Finnish perspective

To study cost-effectiveness of an interleukin (IL)-17A inhibitor secukinumab, with other biologics and apremilast in patients with Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) from payer perspective in Finland.

Authors: Timo Purmonen, Kari Puolakka, Devarshi Bhattacharyya, Minal Jain and Janne Martikainen

Impact of drug substitution on cost of care: an example of economic analysis of cetuximab versus panitumumab

The alarming increase in the cost of cancer care is forcing all stakeholders to re-evaluate their approach to treatment. Drugs are the main contributor to the cost. To evaluate the significance of drug substit...

Authors: Yifan Xu, Joel W. Hay and Afsaneh Barzi

Combining A4R and MCDA in priority setting for health

Multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been proposed as a method for determining the criteria to be used in health technology assessment. A standard criticism of MCDA is that it lacks attention to secu...

Authors: Norman Daniels

Setting health sector priorities: a brief overview of Ethiopia’s experience

As a country with significant resource constraints, a fair and efficient health priority setting should be at the cornerstone of Ethiopia’s commitment to attain universal health coverage by 2035. This paper dr...

Authors: Mahlet Kifle Habtemariam and Sentayehu Tsegaye Semegn