AUTHOR=Simoens Steven , Spriet Isabel TITLE=Guidance for Demonstrating the Societal Value of new Antibiotics JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pharmacology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.618238 DOI=10.3389/fphar.2020.618238 ISSN=1663-9812 ABSTRACT=

Given that antibiotic use is associated with externalities, standard economic evaluation which considers costs and health gains accruing to patients under-values antibiotics. Informed by a scoping review, this discussion paper aims to identify the societal value elements of antibiotics and to provide guidance on how these value elements can be incorporated in economic evaluation. With a view to appropriately quantify the societal value of antibiotics, there is a need for good practice guidelines on the methodology of economic evaluation for such products. We argue that it is important to assess antibiotics at population level to account for their transmission, diversity, insurance, spectrum, novel action and enablement values. In addition to the value of antibiotics to infected patients, economic evaluations need to use modeling approaches to explore the impact of different modes of employing new and existing antibiotics (for example, as last resort treatment) on disease transmission and resistance development in current and future patients. Hence, assessing the value of antibiotics also involves an ethical dimension. Further work is required about how the multiple value elements of antibiotics are linked to each other and how they can be aggregated.