What is Health Economics and What is its Role in Clinical Trials?
Health economics is concerned with how society uses scarce resources to meet the demand and need for healthcare services. This scarcity creates a need for prioritisation and hence a strong case for health economic evaluation that aims to provide decision makers with estimates of the health benefits and costs associated with different interventions.
Resources are limited and we need to know whether the intervention represents good value for money. In other words, is it cost-effective?
There are various methods that can be used to illustrate this. It is the measurement of outcome that determines what type of economic evaluation to use. An economic evaluation is a comparison of the costs (resource use) and consequences (outcomes, effects) of health care interventions, and treatments which provide the greatest benefit per unit of cost should be prioritized (e.g. Quality-adjusted-life years (QALYs) gained).
Traditionally, health economics have not been an integral part of clinical studies. This is about to change with increased awareness of health care costs in the society