This interesting presentation addresses the important question of whether health care systems can afford the new treatments emerging in CLL. What is clearly good for patient care provides a challenge for the health economy.

Dr Follows explains how cost-effectiveness is calculated, eg, according to Quality Adjusted Life Years – QALY, and Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio - ICER.

He outlines the challenges of calculating cost-effectiveness for CLL drug regimens, including how similar patients in clinic are from the clinical trial study population.

He also addresses the balance needed in health economics in CLL between life expectancy, age and co-morbidities.

Content taken from a Mundipharma sponsored satellite symposium at iwCLL 2013 as part of the official programme.