Cost-effectiveness analysis and sustainable innovation in healthcare: A review of cost transferability from the MENA region

Abstract

Healthcare systems are constantly confronted with major challenges: deliver quality services and provide access to health technology innovations while keeping costs under budget constraints. Health expenditure is following a fastgrowing paste globally, and it is important that governments and healthcare providers rethink the health-services delivery to be more sustainable. Hence, comes the role of health economists, focusing their research on sustainability and innovation in healthcare and providing insights on how to make informed decisions under the umbrella of universal healthcare. An example of this is reusing primary data from other jurisdictions and adjusting it to local settings where costs are infrequently reported such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The aim of this paper is to systematically review the methodology and reporting quality of economic evaluation publications using costs transferred from other jurisdictions to countries in MENA. The literature search was performed in PubMed and Web-of-Science. Full-text screening and data extraction were done in duplicates. Transfering costs is a novel practice within the region where Gulf countries are slightly leading in the number of transferred costs. There is a growing interest in the study of geographical transferability of scarcely available diseaserelated costs to support decisions about more effective and sustainable allocation of healthcare resources. However, more efforts are needed to consolidate best practices about the transferability of disease-related costs.