Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Interventions for Priority Setting in the Health System: An Update From WHO CHOICE
Open accessAbstract
The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Choosing Interventions that are Cost-Effective (CHOICE) programme has been a global leader in the field of economic evaluation, specifically cost-effectiveness analysis for almost 20 years. WHO-CHOICE takes a "generalized" approach to cost-effectiveness analysis that can be seen as a quantitative assessment of current and future efficiency within a health system. This supports priority setting processes, ensuring that health stewards know how to spend resources in order to achieve the highest health gain as one consideration in strategic planning. This approach is unique in the global health landscape. This paper provides an overview of the methodological approach, updates to analytic framework over the past 10 years, and the added value of the WHO-CHOICE approach in supporting decision makers as they aim to use limited health resources to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
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The WTP level was set at three-time per-capita GDP in China (US$ 30,828, in 2019).
“As recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), we set the WTP level at three-time per-capita GDP in China (US$ 30,828, in 201954).”
From Economic evaluation for medical artificial intelligence: accuracy vs. cost-effectiveness in a diabetic retinopathy screening case (2024) · cites this paper as [54]
The Thresholds section (page not provided) says earlier GDP-based thresholds were intended as broad categories for local consideration, not decision rules. It recommends against using a cost-effectiveness threshold as a decision rule and uses no threshold to classify interventions. It therefore does not recommend setting willingness to pay at three times China’s per-capita GDP. (LLM, conf=0.90)
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Wang, Y., Liu, C., Hu, W., Luo, L., Shi, D., Zhang, J., Yin, Q., Zhang, L., Han, X., & He, M. (2024) · npj Digital Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41746-024-01032-9 · Cited by 76 · see citing works
- Authors
- Bertram, M. Y., Lauer, J. A., Stenberg, K., & Edejer, T. T. T.
- Affiliations
- World Health Organization (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Bertram, Melanie Y.
- Venue
- International Journal of Health Policy and Management
- Publisher
- Maad Rayan Publishing Company
- Published
- 2021-01-20
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 673-677
- ISSN
- 2322-5939 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9278384
- OpenAlex
- W3129651396
- Cited by
- 160
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 6
- FWCI
- 19.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- International Journal of Health Policy and Management (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- World Health Organization
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Global Health Care Issues
- Keywords
- cost-effectiveness analysis, healthcare resource allocation, health decision-making, Sustainable Development Goals, health system efficiency
- MeSH terms
- Sustainable Development, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Delivery of Health Care, Humans, Global Health, World Health Organization
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