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Hepatitis B Decision Tool
Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection is a long-time serious public health problem due to its potential morbidity and mortality from liver diseases. Although a serious health problem, there is a safe and effective vaccine to prevent CHB and there is safe and effective antiviral treatment (as simple as a pill a day) to prevent disease progression leading to cirrhosis and liver cancer. The purpose of this tool is to help policy makers evaluate/calculate the costs and benefits of CHB treatment strategies in different international settings.
The potential usefulness of this information for health policy and planning is in assessing whether current intervention strategies represent an efficient use of scarce resources, and which of the potential additional interventions that are not yet or fully implemented, should be given priority on the grounds of cost-effectiveness. For example, the tool will help the policy maker assess at what negotiated antiviral drug cost would treatment be highly cost-effective.
The cost-effectiveness outcomes are based on a mathematical simulation model developed by Dr. Mehlika Toy from the Asian Liver Center, Stanford School of Medicine and funded by the Stanford Center for Clinical and Translational Research and Education Spectrum innovation pilot grant (2014). The paper on the cost-effectiveness population health model may be accessed in Hepatology (link to article). The decision tool was developed by Dr. Mehlika Toy, the coding/programming and interface was designed by Katie Hahm and Sunil Pai. We would like to acknowledge Mete Fikirlier for his valuable contribution to improve the decision tool, and Colin Man for his helping hand as web-master.
