ABSTRACT
The use of companion diagnostic-medicine combinations to target
pharmacological treatments can potentially be beneficial to patients
and health care providers alike, with improved clinical effectiveness,
fewer episodes of adverse events, and reduced costs to health
care systems predicted. However, decision makers charged with
allocating finite health care budgets require robust and timely
evidence to support the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness
of pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic technologies before they
can be recommended for funding and use in clinical practice.
This chapter describes the underlying concepts that inform the
framework of economic evaluation. Economic evaluation is a
method that is used to quantify the incremental costs and benefits
of new interventions compared with current practice. The chapter
introduces the types of methods of economic evaluation and
provides an overview of the design of an economic evaluation. The
chapter then summarizes the current level of evidence supporting
the use of pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic technologies.
The chapter concludes by describing the current key issues and
suggests some future challenges for the design, conduct, and use of
studies to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of pharmacogenomics in
clinical practice.
