Implementation of Cost-Consequences Analysis As an Economic Evaluation Method for Artificial Intelligent (AI) Medical and Digital Technologies. the Case of Hosmartai (HORIZON 2020 FUNDED)

OBJECTIVES: The international literature presents a plethora of studies exploring the differences between medical technology and pharmaceuticals products. However, literature on economic evaluation methods of AI and digital technologies scarce. NICE UK recommends that the use of Cost-Consequences Analysis (CCA) should be the primary analytical approach to enable the disaggregated reporting of economic and clinical benefits. At HosmartAI project following NICE recommendation a CCA was designed to assess the value of health digital technologies. HosmartAI creates a common open integration platform with the necessary tools to facilitate and measure the benefits of integrating digital technologies in the European healthcare system. The study aims to analyze the implementation of CCA in the HosmartAI project.

METHODS: HosmartAI consists of 8 pilots with 11 medical scenarios and 1 administrative scenario. The diversity of technologies among pilots led to a variety of instruments for each specific technology on a proof-of-concept basis. A comprehensive selection of KPIs was performed, to capture the incremental difference between the current technology and the HosmartAI technology of each pilot and enable to perform the cost-consequence analysis of each technology

RESULTS: The chosen KPI pillars were: 1) Clinical outcomes, 2) Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs), 3) Patient/User Reported Experiences Measures (PREMs/UREMs), 4) Productivity and 5) Economic data. Based on the above KPIs, a CCA was designed using a descriptive table to report the effects in a disaggregated format, together with the estimates of the mean costs with appropriate measures of dispersion associated with each pilot. The incremental differences in both costs and consequences were calculated between the current technology and the health digital technologies.

CONCLUSIONS: The CCA approach was selected as provides a simple broken-down summary of costs and effects and allows decision-makers to determine the potential impact of the intervention that is most relevant to their settings.