Cost-Utility Analysis
There are three types of economic evaluation that dominate the pharmacoeconomic literature: cost-effectiveness evaluations, cost-benefit evaluations and cost-utility evaluations. To these should be added cost-minimization evaluations (where outcome targets are set or outcomes are identical between the program options) and cost-consequences evaluations (where the only consideration is the impact of competing programs on the costs of health care delivery). This last type is often described as a partial economic evaluation because it does not attempt to compare costs and consequences of alternative interventions. In a cost-utility evaluation the outcomes of the intervention (again, hopefully expressed in effectiveness terms) are translated to a measure that includes morbidity and mortality dimensions, the quality adjusted life-year (or QALY). The impacts of competing interventions are expressed in terms of costs per QALY. These evaluation techniques are considered in Theoretical Foundations of Cost-Utility Analysis, Measuring Values and Utilities, Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), The Reference Case in Pharmacoeconomic Analysis.
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