Health economics, genomics and the value of knowing

January 5, 2017 James Buchanan Paper reviewdecision-making, genetics, genomics,preferences, value, value of knowing

In July 2016, the Office for Health Economics and the European Personalised Medicine Association published a white paper titled: “The Value of Knowing and Knowing the Value: Improving the Health Technology Assessment of Complementary Diagnostics”. This publication did not receive a great deal of attention at the time, but it raises some interesting points related to genomic testing that are worthy of consideration by a wider audience. In particular, it highlights several things that we currently do reasonably well in health economics and genomics, as well as some areas in which we need to improve evidence generation, suggesting a future research agenda in this field.