Deploying a spreadsheet tool for early economic value assessment of medical device innovations with healthcare decision makers

Abstract

Abstract Early-stage evaluation of medical device innovations is important for both healthcare decision makers and manufacturers. Basic cost-effectiveness analysis is therefore becoming increasingly necessary outside the usual base of health technology assessment specialists. This paper describes a spreadsheet tool for both healthcare delivery professionals and healthcare technology innovators who are non-experts in health economics. Via a simplified decision-tree model, the tool can be used to compare costs and patient benefit for a new device-related procedure versus standard care with an incumbent device or other alternative. To be broadly comparable across treatments, the tool uses the standard quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) measure of clinical outcome. The tool helps the innovator/manufacturer focus on development needs in order to fill gaps in the input data and so further strengthen their case from a health economics perspective. The results show that mapping device-related innovations to the tool is achievable using expected costs, outcomes data from the literature and estimated ranges for unknown input data. While the result of a simplified analysis is not expected to be definitive, the process of reasoning is illuminating for the parties involved, enabling innovators to articulate the benefits of their innovations and for all parties to highlight gaps in the data and evidence required to take the innovation forward.