Economic Aspects in Precision Medicine and Pharmacogenomics

Abstract

One of the main goals of the healthcare system is to maximize the health status of the community. Decision-makers have to select and advise health technologies that elevate the health of society considering the limited budget of the healthcare systems. Therefore, decision-making about resource reallocating for a new intervention would have opportunity cost which means the excluded health effects of the other interventions that could be resulted from the allocation of this resource to them. Precision medicine (PM), one of the latest interventions, would result in improved outcomes and reduced adverse effects of treatments by doing pharmacogenetics tests (PGx tests). However, because of the considerable costs of precision medicine, the accessibility of this kind of intervention has been affected. Economic evaluation is a crucial tool to determine and compare the value of various interventions, especially the expensive ones, and plays a remarkable role in the decision-making process in healthcare systems. The results of these studies are an important tool for proposing the exact impending value of the PM interventions to policymakers. However, due to the precision medicine characteristics, some issues have emerged in conducting economic evaluations of PM interventions which have to be considered in designing and implementing such studies. This chapter aims to discuss the importance of economic evaluation and address the challenges and methodological concerns in the field of PM as well as the available solutions.