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...

Like other countries, Australia has had some success in incorporating economic evidence into national healthcare decisions. However, it has been recognised that this coverage does not extend to the local hospital or health region level. An extensive body of research has identified barriers to...

DOI: 10.2165/0019053-200826090-00001

Objective: To explore whether the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) takes account of concerns other than just incremental cost effectiveness in commissioning healthcare services. Method: A stated preference binary choice experiment was used to explore the preferences...

DOI: 10.2165/0019053-200826090-00002

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...

This article reviews the development of economic evaluation of health technologies in the UK and its impact on decision making. After a long period of limited impact from studies mainly carried out as academic exercises, the advent of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence...