Assessing the value of cardiac biomarkers: going beyond diagnostic accuracy?

In this article, the authors review current approaches to assessing cost–effectiveness in cardiac laboratory tests. This review, from Future Cardiology, is free to access exclusively for The Evidence Base® members. In an era of scrutinized resource utilization, providers and payers are more focused than ever on the value of healthcare interventions. Cost—effectiveness evaluations are required by some health authorities and requested by others in order to guide budget allocation decisions. In the past, these evaluations did not methodologically consider laboratory diagnostics. In this review, researchers from Abbott (IL, USA and Wiesbaden, Germany) explore current requirements of health technology agencies that include laboratory diagnostics...