Estimating development cost of an interactive website based cancer screening promotion program

Area of Science:

• Health communication
• Digital health interventions
• Cancer prevention

Background:

• Many women aged 50-75 do not adhere to colorectal and breast cancer screening guidelines.
• Interactive web-based interventions offer a novel approach to improve screening adherence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To estimate the initial development costs of an innovative, interactive web-based talk show format intervention.
• The intervention aims to increase cancer screening rates among non-adherent women aged 50-75.

Main Methods:

• A societal perspective was adopted for cost estimation.
• Micro-costing methods and vendor contract costs were utilized.
• Personnel time was tracked using staff logs; non-personnel costs included all other resources.

Main Results:

• The total development cost for the web-based intervention was $0.39 million.
• Direct costs constituted 77% of the total development expenditure.
• Personnel time, contract, and overhead costs accounted for approximately 98% of the total cost.

Conclusions:

• Significant investment in health promotion and media specialists is required for web-based disease prevention media.
• High human capital investment was the primary driver of development costs.
• Understanding intervention development costs is crucial for planning future public and private investments in digital health promotion.