Introduction
In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) provide vital information to aid clinical decisions from screening, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and monitoring. They are key to ensuring the right treatment is delivered to patients within critical timeframes.
Healthcare decision-making is accelerating and professionals are expected to do more with timely information. Rapid delivery of accurate lab tests, with consistent reliability and quality are vital to delivering improved patient outcomes. IVDs create value for clinicians, healthcare executives, and patients. To this end, the Value of Diagnostic Information (VODI) maximizes the utility of IVDs in efficient healthcare systems.
Most countries in the Middle East and Africa provide public healthcare programs, complemented by private healthcare insurance. Public funding is commonly strained by limited budgets, health emergencies such as SARS-CoV2-, and constantly increasing demand. Obtaining real value from IVDs are therefore vital for sustaining our healthcare systems. The Value of Diagnostic Information (VODI) includes four categories of value (Figure 1) and goes beyond conventional cost containment approaches:
Middle Eastern healthcare procurement is vulnerable to oil price fluctuations and possible collapse, and healthcare emergencies such as SARS-CoV2-. This paper, explores how IVDs create value for patients, health systems, and society through the four categories of a value-driven access model. It also demonstrates how healthcare systems rely on VODI to make related policy recommendations. This paper highlights how medical diagnostics are used in a wide range of clinical applications, and how diagnostics has been undervalued by traditional Health Technology Assessment methods.
VODI- Value Drivers
Diagnostic tests and technologies impact on both quality and cost of patient care processes.
