Making decisions about health technologies: a cost-effectiveness perspective

This handbook is intended to inform policy makers at various levels of decision making in health care about the technique of economic appraisal and to help them appreciate the potential roles of economic appraisal in health policy. In this context “policy makers” may be broadly defined: politicians, who may want to assess the role of this technique in general health policy, civil servants at the ventral government level, who may want to give this technique its appropriate place in health care legislation and administration; health care insurers, who may want to use the technique in selection efficient health care providers and programmes; health care managers, who may want to use it in support of internal resource allocation; health care professionals, who may consider it as one of the essential elements for the development of practice guidelines and protocols, and finally, manufacturers of medical equipment and pharmaceutical products, who may see it is an appropriate instrument to position their products in a competitive health care market. Since the interest in the role of economic appraisal will differ between these decision makers, we will consider health policy at different levels of the health care system, but focus on (central) government regulation as the area where economic appraisal currently has the most prominent role.