Introduction and Overview

The overall aim of this book is to set out the main changes needed in the field of economic and regulatory conditions as a consequence of these rapid developments in oncology. The traditional approaches of health economics, like health economic evaluation, health technology assessment (HTA), modeling methods, assessing value, pricing techniques, are bound to be altered in the contributions to this book. It is understandable that with the life-threatening diagnosis of cancer the new treatment options need to be accompanied by the best available health economic tools. This pertains to well-implemented decision rules concerning willingness to pay, incremental cost-effectiveness ratio thresholds, equity, patient access, end of life criteria, etc. Their application differs with regard to the usual health economic analyzes implemented in other treatment areas. Overstating a bit one could ask whether we need a strongly modified concept of oncology economics?