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Financial aspects of employee fitness programmes
Published in John Kerr, Amanda Griffiths, Tom Cox, Workplace Health, Employee Fitness and Exercise, 2020
An economist may undertake a cost/benefit, a cost/utility, or a cost/effectiveness analysis of a work-site fitness programme. To date, the cost/benefit approach has usually been applied. In this approach, programme expenditures are compared with the estimated monetary benefits, usually to persuade a company to begin, continue or expand its investment in fitness programming. A cost/utility analysis, in contrast, estimates the expense needed to achieve a given outcome, and makes it possible to judge whether this represents reasonable value for money. Depending on the maturity of the programme, the evaluation of utility might be process related (for instance, the cost of achieving 20% participation in a fitness programme) or outcome related (for instance, the cost of reducing absenteeism by 10%). The cost/benefit and cost/utility approaches tend to merge when, for example, a $300001 programme investment is regarded as a sensible expenditure because it yields the equivalent of one person-year of productive lifespan. A cost/effectiveness analysis, in turn, compares the impact of a given programme investment with the impact that might be achieved by some alternative use of the same funds; for example, the reduction in absenteeism achieved by an equal investment in a work-site fitness programme and a targeted employee assistance programme.
Economic Considerations in Simulation-Based Training
Published in Christopher Best, George Galanis, James Kerry, Robert Sottilare, Fundamental Issues in Defense Training and Simulation, 2013
One form of cost-effectiveness analysis is cost-utility analysis, where the return is assessed in terms of utility or value received by the beneficiaries of the investment. Cost-utility analysis is frequently encouraged but rarely used in sectors other than health services, where there is significant attention paid to quality-adjusted life years (Drummond & McGuire, 2001). Cost-utility analysis may be of particular importance for assessing quality-of-life issues for military personnel.
Scoping review of economic evaluations of assistive technology globally
Published in Assistive Technology, 2021
Sarah Averi Albala, Frida Kasteng, Arne Henning Eide, Rainer Kattel
The literature search was compliant with the PRISMA search criteria and included all articles from the date range of January 1990–January 2020. The academic search string used a combination of evaluative terminology including; cost-benefit analysis, return on investment, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, and social return on investment. The search string also consisted of words related to evaluation, assessment, measurement, value and impact. These words were selected because they were analogous to assessment and evaluation. In terms of capturing assistive technology, the research strategy first conducted a general search of assistive technology through terms, such as: assistive products, technologies, and devices. For the academic search, the study then incorporated the specific assistive products as defined by the WHO product priority list into the search string along with the selected evaluative terminology. For the gray literature search, a similar approach of crafting an initial search string of an evaluation term and an assistive technology term was also implemented within the specific organizational websites. However, because of the snowballing approach of case study gathering, the researchers did not search for each one of the specific assistive products on the WHO priority lists for the gray literature search.
Incomplete cost – incomplete benefit analysis in transport appraisal
Published in Transport Reviews, 2018
The timeline of the use of CBA is well documented: first being applied in the 1930s in the USA to prioritise between flood prevention projects (Næss, 2006). The application of CBA has grown tremendously as the number of infrastructure projects and level of public sector spending has risen. CBA is now applied to a wide range of projects and policy interventions in different domains, and involves a range of different approaches, including CBA, cost-effectiveness analysis (measuring the progress against objectives as well as the costs) and cost-utility analysis (output is measured in one dimension, e.g. quality adjusted life years). In the UK, CBA was first used in transport planning to prioritise between proposed highway schemes, but has since been applied to public transport, cycling, walking, public realm and other projects. The CBA is used as part of the wider MCA to help decide whether a project is suitable for investment, and usually a positive BCR is required for funding. There is evidence that the BCR is sometimes overlooked when appraising major infrastructure projects (Annema, 2013) and even road investments (Nellthorp & Mackie, 2000; Odeck, 2010), yet the CBA is still an important element in the decision-making for the majority of transport projects in the UK.
Designing medical technology for resilience: integrating health economics and human factors approaches
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2018
Simone Borsci, Ijeoma Uchegbu, Peter Buckle, Zhifang Ni, Simon Walne, George B. Hanna
A review of current health economic practices in Europe resulted in guidance by EUnetHTA [8]. This recommends the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) or cost-utility analysis (CUA) to enhance the usability of the economic assessment [8]. Hence, to ensure applicability in all health-care systems, economic evaluations of medical technologies should be based on their impact on health outcomes [55]. This may be a measure of health, such as years of life as seen in CEA, or a generic measure of disease burden, such as quality adjusted life years (QALY) as seen in CUA [47]. QALYs enable both the added quality and length of life achieved by a new intervention in comparison to current practice to be measured. This article aims to add to current consensus to carry out health economic evaluation at earlier stages of device design so that the developer ‘feel[s] more confident about the value of further development of the test’ [56]. It also aims to support the gathering of information to improve early- and late-stage health economic evaluation. By integrating health economic and human factors research, HERD MedTech aims to establish a new method of evaluating the impact dimensions (i.e. the nonphysical characteristics of the technology) that must be considered in the development of MT. The rationale for integrating these two areas of research is based on two observations in the early stages of design. Firstly, physical features (e.g. portability) enable new and specific applications of a new MT within a health-care context. Secondly, the degree to which a technology affects impact dimensions is likely to also affect a health-care system’s capacity to realize health and economic benefits of a new MT.