Economic Modeling and Decision Making in the Development and Clinical Application of Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering in regenerative medicine has become one of the most promising subjects in current medical research. A number of procedures based on or involving tissue engineering have already been approved for human application and are clinically available, and numerous others are on the edge of becoming so. During the development of a new procedure and the process of its approval, repeated evaluations, focusing on different aspects, are necessary. Initial studies focus on the effect of a treatment; subsequently its efficacy and effectiveness as well as safety profiles are established. Before a procedure will be directed towards clinical application, economic evaluations are done assessing whether further investment of scarce resources is justified. In public health such justification is consistent with showing a highly effective treatment and ruling out that the same investment could result in more productive research or a more effective treatment elsewhere, while from a microeconomic perspective potential revenue is addressed. Such argumentation is a source of much debate, but can hardly be avoided given a true scarcity of resources and increasing costs of health care. Due to the increasing importance of such issues, especially in a high end, multidisciplinary field such as tissue engineering, knowledge on the principles of economic evaluation has become a valuable addition to a researcher’s expertise. It is the objective of this chapter to give a concise introduction to economic modeling and resulting decision-making strategies in health care in the evaluation of tissue engineering.