ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the conceptual tools and substantive background needed to understand and evaluate cost-effectiveness assessments of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and the implications of global policy from a health economic perspective. It introduces and explains basic concepts of health economics as they relate to this issue, including resources and cost, health metrics, and different types of health economic evaluations. The chapter reviews the health economic evaluations on GDM screening and management, while elaborating these concepts. Within a GDM screening context, the outcome of a Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) could be found cases of GDM or prevented cases of neonatal morbidity depending on the time horizon used. Though the concept of "cost-benefit" is frequently used as a layman's term, CBA is actually a rarely used type of analysis in healthcare. The chapter provides a brief summary of cost-effectiveness results and discuss future directions for research.
