Toward Development of a New Health Economic Evaluation Definition

TL;DR

This paper reviews existing health economic evaluation definitions, highlighting the need for a new, clearer definition to better guide resource allocation in healthcare amidst rising costs and medical advances.

Contribution

It analyzes current definitions to identify common features and proposes the development of a new, more comprehensive health economic evaluation definition.

Findings

Existing definitions are diverse and often inadequate.

Common features of current definitions are identified.

A foundation is laid for developing a new, improved definition.

Abstract

Economic evaluation is a dynamically advancing knowledge area of health economics. It has been conceived to provide evidence for allocating scarce resources to gain the best value for money. The problem of efficiency of investments becomes even more crucial with advances in modern medicine and public health which bring about both improved patient outcomes and higher costs. Despite the abundance of literature on the economic evaluation concepts, some key notions including the definition of the health economic evaluation remain open for discussion. Academic literature offers a large number and growing variety of economic evaluation definitions. It testifies to the fact that existing definitions do not meet requirements of economists. The aim of this study was to examine existing definitions and reveal their common features.