Healthcare and Diagnostics

• 19 Sep 2022

Healthcare and Diagnostics

It is recognized that patients can live healthier and longer lives when disease progression is prevented or delayed or when patients recover through timely diagnosis, followed by appropriate clinical management. Diagnostics deliver information that can benefit patients by enabling the selection of the right treatment, helping doctors to choose appropriate preventive interventions, and providing vital prognostic data that can optimize care pathways and management. The diagnostic information may also enable informed choices regarding, for example, reproduction, nutrition, and changes in lifestyle.

Furthermore, diagnostic information may help to avoid or shorten hospitalization, decrease inappropriate medication use, or shorten the length of sick leave, thereby bringing economic value in terms of cost-containment as well as fostering improved health outcomes, ultimately leading to more efficient use of resources.

Unlike therapeutics, for which direct clinical effects can often be straightforwardly demonstrated, diagnostics provide information that indirectly influences patient management as well as the economic efficiency of healthcare systems. It is often more difficult to generate evidence to demonstrate the full potential of diagnostic information, as compared to generating such evidence for therapeutics, and may require a different approach.

We introduce the value of diagnostic information, which goes beyond conventional cost-effectiveness metrics by including the “value of knowing” as well as the quality of life improvements arising from this knowledge gain. Diagnostic information is valued across multiple dimensions with each dimension being weighted differently by different stakeholders. This might explain why diagnostics are generally considered only in the context of a specific treatment or circumstance, while the broader value of diagnostic information is frequently overlooked.