Medical Treatments and Technologies: Governance, Cost-Effectiveness, and Accessibility

Diseases affect not only the quality of life of those impacted but also entail large societal costs—both direct expenses for treatment and indirect costs such as lost work capacity and productivity. Medical advances offer better treatments for both existing and previously untreated conditions, but how well these are integrated into healthcare depends on governance, organization, and financial incentives. A central question is also how the organization and governance of healthcare influence which patients gain access to new treatments, as well as how a fair and equal distribution of resources can be ensured.

Decisions to implement new treatments or technologies, or to include new pharmaceuticals in the high-cost protection scheme, require careful assessments not only of their effectiveness but also of how effective they are in relation to their costs. Because these decisions have major impacts on both healthcare and patients, it is important that the evidence on which they are based is well-founded and reliable.

At the Centre for Health Governance, cost-effectiveness evaluations of new medical interventions and technologies are carried out, along with analyses of the reliability of the evidence used in implementation decisions. The Centre for Health Governance also studies how governance models and policy decisions influence the adoption and use of medical technologies. The research contributes knowledge on how healthcare can balance innovation, cost-effectiveness, and equitable access to new treatments.