OBJECTIVES

Hepatitis B is a significant social and clinical problem in China with prevalence reaching 11%. One important factor contributing to such high prevalence is mother to infant transmission. Stopping or mitigating mother to infant transmission would significantly reduce total Hepatitis B prevalence in Chinese population. The objective of this study is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a Hepatitis B Mobile Health Education APP with the purpose to stop mother to infant transmission.

METHODS

Literature indicated that mother to infant transmission can be mitigated via Hep B vaccines. However, the vaccine is not effective if transmission happens during the gestation stage and this type of transmission can be prevented if effective antiviral treatment is instituted. Educating mothers on this knowledge and reaching as broad a population as possible to initiate anti-viral treatment becomes critical. A cell phone based App is designed to reach broad hepatitis B infected pregnant mothers to help monitoring their hepB DNA counts status and to facilitate the initiation of antiviral intervention.

An analysis was conducted to evaluate the cost effectiveness of the Mobile Health Platform over a 2 year and a lifetime time horizon. Model parameters such as costs for antiviral therapies, disease related costs, drug treatment costs, adverse events/costs, disease state utilities, incidence and costs of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were abstracted from literature. The mother to infant transmission incidence were obtained from a naturalistic clinical study of expected mothers utilizes the mobile education APP.

RESULTS : AND CONCLUSIONS

The analysis demonstrated that the introduction of a mobile health platform for the education, treatment, and management of expected mother infected with Hepatitis B is cost effective in the short term (2 year) and dominant for the life time for the prevention of mother to infant transmission of Hepatitis B in the Chinese population.