New framework to facilitate the uptake of budget impact of vaccines alongside cost-effectiveness analysis

A recent article by Dr Natalie Carvalho at the Centre for Health Policy and co-authors has been published in Pharmacoeconomics.

In low- and middle-income countries, budget impact is an important criterion for funding new interventions, particularly for large public health investments such as new vaccines. Yet fewer budget impact analyses (BIAs) are published compared with cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs).

Based on international best practice recommendations, this study developed a framework consisting of a BIA quality assessment checklist and a scoring system to critically assess the quality of a BIA.

As CEAs are more common than BIAs, particularly in LMICs. it would be helpful if they could be adapted to provide budget impact information without requiring much additional data or analysis. Such pragmatic adaptations could be immediately useful to policy makers seeking to fill the gap in stand-alone BIAs. A modified BIA checklist and scoring system was developed for CEAs, to evaluate whether, and if so, the extent to which, a CEA can be used to provide sufficient information for a BIA.

The proposed framework through which CEA could be used as a tool to provide useful budget impact information could facilitate the uptake and improvement of good quality BIA for decision makers.

Further details and access to the (open access) article can be found here.