From research to practice: Standardised methods for economic evaluation of implementation strategies

Evaluating the value for money of implementation strategies to translate research into practice is a challenge. Methodological approaches exist, but they are not standardised and need to be used more often and more effectively.

ARC West has addressed this problem by bringing together 2 important methods – value of implementation and policy cost-effectiveness – into a unified, standardised framework for assessing the economic impact of healthcare implementation.

The study, published in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, summarises the 2 methods and demonstrates how they can be expressed in equivalent terms. The paper sets out a standardised stepwise approach that researchers can use to systematically evaluate other implementation strategies.

By applying this new approach, researchers will be better equipped to assess the value for money (or ‘cost-effectiveness’) of strategies designed to increase the uptake of beneficial treatments and interventions. The goal is to close the research-to-practice gap that does not benefit anyone.

To showcase the approach, the team applied it to the ARC West evaluation of the national PReCePT programme and its nested enhanced support study. PReCePT aimed to increase the uptake of magnesium sulfate in maternity units in England to prevent cerebral palsy. Their comparison found the national programme generated a net monetary benefit of £30,247 per maternity unit over 12 months, with a 98% probability of being cost-effective. In contrast, the enhanced support package generated a net monetary loss of £28,682 per unit compared to the national programme, with a 22% probability of being cost-effective.

These standardised methods will play a key role in ARC West-related projects such as Common Ambition Bristol and VACCinE. They will support many more initiatives in the future.

This work contributes to  ImplementEcon, a new network to bring together health economics and implementation science.

Dr Carlos Sillero Rejon, Fellow in Health Economics at NIHR ARC West and lead author of the paper, said:

“Our standardised method could promote a more systematic assessment of the value for money of implementation interventions. We hope that other researchers can use our method and let us know how they find it.

“We are delighted to publish this paper that feeds into ImplementEcon’s drive to bring together the spheres of health economics and implementation science.”