Examination of the issues important to patients in testing and diagnosis related to health economics

The goal of testing and diagnosis in health care is to identify the optimum and most appropriate treatment pathway for the patient to ensure that the patient receives the necessary treatment in a timely manner. However there are many issues that are often overlooked when considering testing and diagnosis from a health economics perspective. A testing pathway itself may lead to adverse patient outcomes due to anxiety experienced by the patient, or perhaps by the complications associated with the testing procedure. Moreover there is also the issue of whether a testing pathway can identify the optimum treatment pathway for a patient in a timely manner, since in many settings delays to accessing treatment can lead to excess morbidity and sometimes death.
A greater understanding of these issues is of importance because they can contribute to more informed economic evaluations being conducted and ultimately more informed decisions that have greater impact on patient benefit being made.

For this project the student has the opportunity to examine the issues described above in a setting of their own choice. This project can include but is not limited to:

A systematic review in a specific setting to examine how testing pathways have been described in previous economic evaluations.

Examination of the issues that are particularly important to patients on a testing pathway, either through a systematic review or through the collection of primary data

A model based economic evaluation alongside a randomised control trial that is focused on alternative approaches to testing.