In this week's PLoS Medicine, John Ioannidis and Alan Garber from Stanford University, USA, discuss how to use incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) and related metrics so they can be useful for decision-making at the individual level, whether used by clinicians or individual patients. The authors say that "Cost-effectiveness analysis offers a foundation for rational decision-making and can be very helpful in making health care more efficient and effective at the population level. Such analyses can often become more useful for clinicians and for individual patients as well, when they individualize the cost-utility information they present. Individual-tailored information can complement the traditional ICER."
Funding: No funding was received for this work.
Competing Interests: JI is a member of the PLoS Medicine Editorial Board. The authors have declared that no other competing interests exist.
Citation: Ioannidis JPA, Garber AM (2011) Individualized Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. PLoS Med 8(7): e1001058.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001058
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CONTACT:John P. A. Ioannidis
Stanford Prevention Research Center
Department of Medicine and Department of Health Research and Policy
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA
United States of America
+1 650 725 5465
jioannid@stanford.edu
Journal
PLoS Medicine