Cost-effectiveness analysis and its application for policy evaluation for medicine or public health

In comparison to the policy for other field, the policy for medicine and public health is to consider the value of life or the value of the quality of life. Quality of life is very well known as a concept of QOL. Also, Quality Adjusted Life of Years (QALY) which integrates QOL over life of years is widely used as a measure of the value of life. Cost-effectiveness analysis for medicine and public health adopts two approaches to incorporate value of QOL or QALY. We summarize those advantage and disadvantage briefly at first. Unfortunately, cost-effectiveness analysis has not been committed and operated as an official rule for the method of policy evaluation for medicine or public health in Japan, yet. Thus we show some researches about it which examines ex post or ex ante policy evaluation using cost-effectiveness analysis. In other countries, some political decision making in medicine or public health is based on cost-effectiveness analysis. However, the pressure of the financial deficit will require more accountability about evidence. Therefore, cost-effectiveness analysis must be more important even in political decision making in medicine or public health in Japan.