The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) invited the manufacturer of denosumab (Amgen Inc., UK) to submit evidence for the clinical and cost effectiveness of denosumab for the prevention of fragility fractures in post-menopausal women, as part of the Institute's single...

Economists engaged in comparative effectiveness research (CER) commonly adopt particular value judgements that underpin many of their methods. Two of these are the idea of a 'societal perspective' and that the foundation of values in measures of health outcome is individual preferences. This...

Background: The hurdle of cost effectiveness for the selection and reimbursement of drugs in Australia limits access to new medicines based on an assessment of cost relative to clinical benefit. Those drugs that are expensive and provide modest benefits will be less likely to receive a...

The application of cost-effectiveness analysis in healthcare has become commonplace in the US, but the validity of this approach is in jeopardy unless the proverbial $US50 000 per QALY benchmark for determining value for money is updated for the 21st century. While the initial aim of this...

There are three known criteria that underlie drug reimbursement decisions: therapeutic value, cost effectiveness and burden of disease. However, evidence from recent reimbursement decisions in several jurisdictions points to residual unexplained variables,_ one of which may be budget impact._ An...

The QALY is the product of life expectancy (estimated in years) and its quality over that time (estimated in utilities or QOL units). It theoretically enables direct comparison of the costs of obtaining different health outcomes through cost utility analysis (CUA). In this review, we argue that,...

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is required to consider cost effectiveness when issuing guidance about the use of health technologies within the UK NHS. Cost effectiveness is a means of supporting a system objective of maximizing population health gain from the...

Healthcare expenditure in Ontario has been escalating at increasing rates and a growing proportion of this has come from medical devices and other technologies. A comprehensive evidence-based process for the assessment of new health technologies in Ontario was recently established (the Health...