Health Economics of Diabetes Care and Prevention

There is an ever-increasing demand for healthcare. While clinical studies determine an intervention’s efficacy or effectiveness, limited resources mean that choices need to be made when deciding which healthcare interventions should be funded. Health economics focuses on how to make these choices to fund healthcare interventions that will maximize health benefits. This chapter introduces the ideas of key drivers in healthcare costs and issues around sustainability of funding for diabetes-specific programmes. It will then focus on the concept and different types of economic evaluation, measuring quality-adjusted life-years, and its use in identifying diabetes interventions that provide value for money, providing specific examples.