Cost Effectiveness, Coursework Example

Intervention

The main aim of this paper to is found out a technology that helps people to quit smoking but has not yet been analyzed. The cost effectiveness analysis of this device as a means of helping people quit smoking is the main aim of this paper. Cost effectiveness analysis can be defined as a type of economic analysis that seeks to make a comparison of the relative costs and the associated outcomes of different interventions to curb the same (Krishnamurthy, 2001). In this case I will be finding out about cost effectiveness in a device used in stopping one from smoking.

Introduction

At first, smoking was like a candy to everybody. People used it as a means to kill cold during cold days and night. With time, it became something that people did for fun. Tobacco production having seen that smoking was now something that every person wanted produced more cigarettes as well as of different types. However, due to the fact that tobacco producers knew the risks that their products would bring to the person using it, put up a warning that clearly stated that ‘smoking of tobacco was harmful to human beings’. Few people have seen this way to prevent them from smoking. However, the number of people who wishes to retain their good health by not smoking is less than the number that wants to utilize tobacco products.

Health reasons have forces societies to come up with different means that may force people to stop smoking while those who have never smoked not to even dare putting a cigarette in their mouths. Some of these means have proved effective while other have just passed through the thin air. Levin & McEwan (2001) argue that in every pub and club around the world there is a sign that reads smoking not allowed to persons under the age of 18, but do these signs really help or just make people even smoke more?

People now wait until they are 18 years and start smoking, some who have come along these signs even want to know the main reason why they are not allowed to smoke while others think that it is an adventure worth exploring. Smoking is harmful to human health but how many people know that? Are there other means of making people quit smoking? As a matter of fact, yes there are however that is not the matter at hand right now. The matter that this paper tends to evaluate is the cost effectiveness of a technology designed to help people quit smoking.

Device Being Analyzed

Hand Held Computer Smoking Intervention Tool was developed for National Cancer Institute. This is a tool designed to help the medical fraternity to access data about drug interactions, smoking cessation, addiction evaluation and other data to utilize in interview sessions as others begin quitting (Neumann, 2005). According to Muennig (2008), the role of computer is evolving. The next generation medical gadgets and contraptions will be designed in such a way that the gadgets will be used to track smokers’ progress in terms of how far they are in terms of quitting as portrayed by their health records (Orr, 2008).

This will give not only the doctors but also the patients the ability to track their own health in closer range than before. Each and every doctor will now have a portable device that clearly shows how much their patients are trying to quit smoking. QuitKey can be carried in one’s keys and act as a key holder. Its design has been devised with the aim that it will help the smoker acquire freedom from nicotine.

Smokers can smoke normally in the first step and then push the button on the Quitkey device which will enable it to track the patient’s tobacco habit. The patient addiction to cigarettes will be then be shown on the small computer as a profile of his/her addiction. The next step is where the machine prompts the person on when to smoke and how many cigarettes. It does this until the person has quit smoking completely.

The Research

This study assessed the use of quitkey and the associated cost-effectiveness of the how this device was used to reduce the rate of smoking from society standpoint employing a life-time time prospect. Recent analyses approved by the provincial government perception due to their authority over discharging of healthcare services in Canada; accordingly, each province is endowed with the responsibility of developing and executing a mitigation strategy (Schwartz, 2000).

Simulations involving a unit of individuals with demographic characteristics of the population that made smoking their every day activity from June 11, 2009 to June 10, 2010 were used to generate the required data for the research. Outcomes were defined as the number of people that managed to come clean after a number of days they started using the quitkey device to aid them in quitting smoking.

These outcomes were however, used to establish incremental cost effectiveness ratios. The Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment (1997) guidelines  stipulate that a 5% discount rate be used. Microsoft Excel was used to evaluate this phenomenon and come up with a detailed result that showed how this device helped in determining the cost effectiveness associated with it. In addition to that, one-way sensitivity analysis was performed so as to establish the nature and stability of the study results, and to identify the parameters that affect the cost (Muennig, 2008).

Scenario

Two scenarios were used in this analysis. The first one is where people were just left to quit smoking without the help of the quitkey while the other scenario is where the push key was introduced to some people in order to find out the exact number of days that it enabled these people to quit smoking. In the first month, the push keys were not made available to the people. This was in the month of October, 2009 (Gray, Clarke, Wolstenholme & Wordsworth, 2011). The second scenario was carried out in November of the same year. Here, 10,000 people were given the devises and shown the exact way of using them. All the people given these devices were addicted smokers and while the device was made to help them, they did not really want to believe it. In addition to that, the group chosen included both women and men. In both categories both old and young people were involved in the research.

Parameters and Cost Components

This study assessed the cost related to buying of cigarettes as the use of the quitkey was involved. The number of times that one bought cigarettes was used to show the rate at which one was made to quit smoking. The cost of the machine was also included as a way of showing the cost health care cost that one tool when the device was put in place.

Other costs involved in this research involved those costs that one used to visit the hospital with smoking related diseases after the quitkey was introduced. However, since it was hard to get the exact result for every person that was being assessed, the number of time and cost used in hospital visits was generalized. In this cost you will find costs that people had to use in laboratory, medicine buying as well as personal assistance and consultation with the doctors.

In the first few weeks’ people smoked almost at their normal rate. No effort to stop smoking was noticed since most of the Quitkey computers showed very frequent smoking habits with almost everybody. 65% of the population that was being monitored was the number that could be taken as the precise figure that pertained to this phenomenon (Bertrand & Hutchinson, 2006). Of the number of people taken, 75% were proved to be heavy smokers and hence the researcher estimated that it would take more time for them to quit smoking.

The cost that was associated with buying of cigarettes is what was used to find out exactly how much the quitkeys enable people to quit smoking. This is because as time moved on; people were expected to start using less money buying cigarettes. The rate at which people went for medication in the hospital was used as a means of showing exactly how hard it was for people to actually depend on quitkey as a means of helping them quit smoking. The cost was also factored in this study in a separate section and was not added to the side of the quitkey or the cigarette buying costs.

When we analyze all these costs we find that the price of quitkey is exactly $59.95. A cigarette is amounted to almost a dollar in Canada but its consumption will make it seem so expensive depending on the rate at which it is being bought. Pills that enable one to reduce the rate of smoking goes at $2 (Canadian dollar) and almost 30% went for the pills more often. Of the people who were put under investigation, 10% of then did not respond to the quitkey requests and thus their cigarettes consumption remained the same. 5% of the people even though some of them declared it to be hard managed to reduce their smoking rate with the use of the quitkey.

When it comes to hospitalization, the victims that required scanning for cancer and other cigarette smoking diseased constituted 15% of the population while those that required only pills constituted 5% of the population (Bertrand & Hutchinson, 2006). Other hospitalization that included doctor consultation constituted 10% of the population (Bertrand & Hutchinson, 2006). On the contrary, cigarette smoking for these people reduced after a certain period. The people who were using pills as a means of helping them with this phenomenon had their quitkey tools showing some drastic improvement to their health. Their cigarettes buying rate reduced drastically also while other hospitalizations like scanning for cancer and doctor’s appointments did not appear as part of their profile. The most costly among the hospitalization was the scanning and pills. Many people went for scanning a very few time but naturally scanning is expensive. Pills even though were cheaper than the other procedure their frequency of buying made them more expensive. Some people required the whole packet which made it even more expensive compare to those who came for only one pill at a time.

However, people came for the pills a packet at once showed a very big improvement in their health and managed to recover in a very little time than those who came for the pills just a pill at a time.

Results

After a period of two years, the researchers managed to come up with some results pertaining to the research conducted. In the first month cigarette buying was at a very high rate while in the second month this reduced. Quitkey is not devised to reduce the amount of nicotine in one’s body buy a means of showing the amount of nicotine in the body. In this case it was being used to give people the number of hours they required to stay without smoking.

That is exactly how it managed to help people from smoking excessively. As shown in the above section, only 5% of the population managed to use this tool as a means of stopping themselves from smoking (Tulchinsky & Varavikova, 2009). This is a very small percentage given the fact that there were 10,000 people being evaluated in this study. Medicine use was more used and was found to be at approximately 20% while those who went for scanning for cancer constituted a percentage of 10% (Tulchinsky & Varavikova, 2009). While being monitored using this device, it was proved that cigarette buying to the people that were being monitored reduced to some extent.

This however, did not leave out the possibility of having some people who, clearly, could not manage to reduce the rate at which they smoked. Most of these people on the other hand went for both medicine as well as scanning. Part of then were found to contain lots of nicotine in their body.

When it comes to putting amounts to the consumption of cigarettes at this period, it was estimated that in that single month, an amount of $300,000 Canadian dollar was the precise amount that was used to purchase cigarettes. $50,000 Canadian dollar is the amount that was used to purchase medicine while scanning constituted the most amount of $80,000 Canadian dollar (Willan & Briggs, 2006).

Discussion

This paper examines the cost effectiveness of the use of quitkey as a way of helping smokers to quit their habits. However, the use of quitkey was not only used in this process since other things like the use of drags had to come in to aid in this phenomenon. This shows that by using the quitkey people are able to control their rate of smoking as well as use other means to actually quit smoking in the long run.

As part of health, the quitkey has proved to be cost effective in that, its introduction has enabled people to actually reduce the rate at which they smoked. The cost effective analysis can be found in the excel sheet accompanying this document.

Conclusion

Quitkey even though does not remove cancer cells or does not prevent one from smoking has proved very helpful. The fact that some people opted for medicine in this period showed that they really needed to quit smoking and wanted to do that at a very fast rate. Controlling one’s rate of smoking is something which is very hard but with the aid of the push key it can be very possible.

References

Bertrand, J. T., & Hutchinson, P. (2006). ‘Cost-Effectiveness Analysis’. Journal of Health Communication : International Perspectives, 11(1), pp 18 – 109

Gray, A. M., Clarke, P. M., Wolstenholme, J., & Wordsworth, S. (2011). Applied Methods of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Healthcare. Great Claredon Street, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krishnamurthy, S. (2001). Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Evaluation of Confidence Intervals for Cost-Effectiveness Ratio. Illinois: Northern Illinois University.

Levin, H. M., & McEwan, P. J. (2001). Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Applications.  New York, NY: Sage Publications.

Muennig, P. (2008). Cost-Effectiveness Analyses in Health: A Practical Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Neumann, P. J. (2005).Using Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to Improve Health Care: Opportunities and Barriers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Orr, S. J. Want to Quit Smoking? Technology can help. 01 July 2008.  Retrieved on 23rd June 2011 from http://blog.nj.com/digitallife/2008/07/technology_is_helping_to_make.html.

Schwatz, B. (2000). “A cost effective analysis.” Journal of Infectious Deseases and Immunity. 23(2), pp 40 – 49.

Tulchinsky, T. H., & Varavikova, E. (2009).  The New Public Health. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Willan, A. R., & Briggs, A. H. (2006). Statistical Analysis of Cost-Effectiveness Data. Upper Saddle River, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.