New study finds ICT investments could cut healthcare costs for key ailments by more than 35%

The potential savings in the UK alone could exceed 35 per cent, according to researchers from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School of Belgium.

The study takes data from small-scale trials of the new technologies in the UK, Belgium and Germany and runs them through a computer analysis of the costs and benefits, if scaled up across an entire population. It focuses on two specific ailments, breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.

“This is the first analysis of the full ‘value chain’ of healthcare investments from healthy individual to first diagnosis to disease treatment to recovery or death,” said the lead researcher, Prof. Walter Van Dyck of Vlerick. “It shows there’s a hefty up-front cost for these new technologies – which society may or may not want to pay. But it also shows that, in the long run, there’s also a net saving to society by keeping more people healthier for longer in their lives. That’s an important lesson in health economics.”

In the breast cancer case, the study found the average cost per patient over 25 years could fall by 37 per cent. The long-term savings would come from using genetic testing and patient records to screen efficiently for population groups deemed most at risk,  and then concentrating mammography, check-up and other early-detection techniques on those individuals – in essence, catching the illness earlier, when it’s easier and cheaper to treat. But the up-front cost, of computer and testing technologies, would be substantial: £2 billion in the UK alone, and it could take six to eight years for payback to show. The savings, stemming from the earlier detection and a resultant drop in costly late-stage surgery and chemotherapy, is over 25 years, net of input costs.

The cardiovascular case focused on disease prevention, rather than mitigation. Using data from prior studies of the effect of regular exercise, doctor’s check-ups and tele-monitoring of at-risk individuals, the researchers concluded that healthcare costs for heart attacks could drop 46 per cent, or £2,600 per patient – chiefly through avoiding heart attacks in the first place, and treating early problems in the GP’s office rather than in the emergency room.

In the UK, the raw data for the computer analysis in both breast cancer and cardiovascular disease comes from the National Health Service and Cancer Research UK. The Vlerick simulation is based on standard healthcare economics models, but is applied here for the first time to study the beginning-to-end costs and benefits of the technologies.

The study was organised by Science|Business (www.sciencebusiness.net), a London and Brussels-based media network focused on research and innovation, and follows a 2010 opinion survey by it and Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet that showed that medical experts in four countries think there will be short-term costs, but long-term benefits, of personalised healthcare technologies. The Vlerick study took the next logical step, of analysing why the cost-benefit calculation could work out that way.

The study was supported by a consortium that includes: Vlerick, Pfizer, Speedo International, IBM, chip-maker NXP, pharmaceutical industry federation EFPIA, the European COST programme supporting scientific cooperation, and the Royal College of Physicians.