Using patient-reported data to estimate costs associated with melanoma in the UK: a digital registry Mishal Javed¹, Casey Quinn², Fatemeh Amini², Emily Boxell² ¹The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, Islamabad, Pakistan ²Vitaccess Ltd, Oxford, UK
Background Malignant melanoma is the fifth most prevalent cancer in the UK, and one of the leading cancers with regard to average years of life lost per death from disease¹. Despite this, there is a lack of data describing costs associated with melanoma for patients and the National Health Service (NHS).
Additional sources were used, such as UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisals, for unit costs and in cases of limited data availability. A combination of top-down and bottom-up methods were applied to calculate costs for various domains of the disease pathway, including: ●
Routine monitoring and management of disease
Objective
●
Drugs and administration
To estimate costs to the UK health system for the complete disease pathway in melanoma using real-world patient-reported data.
●
Management of treatment-related adverse events
Methods Data were principally from the Melanoma UK digital registry, an observational study collecting patient-reported real-world evidence on the impact of melanoma and its management through the My Melanoma study app (Vitaccess Ltd).
Calculations were used to provide a snapshot of costs in the UK in 2019.
Results Taking into account several simplifying assumptions, the total costs associated with melanoma – calculated using data from 134 participants in the My Melanoma study – were estimated at:
£43,944 per patient
Figure 1: My Melanoma study
Countries takign part in study from 12th August 2019
Countries takign part in study from 12th August 2019
2005 France United kingdom Switzerland Ireland Spain United States Italy Denmark
United kingdom Switzerland Ireland United States Italy Denmark
£5.3 billion for the whole UK population
Of all domains, drug therapies were found to be the costliest, with approximately 79% of the total costs attributed to this domain alone.
Year of birth
2000 1995 1990 1985 1980 1975 1970 1965 1960
Table 2: Other costs
Discussion & Conclusions This analysis produced a detailed, bottom-up picture of the perpatient costs to the UK health system of managing melanoma. To our knowledge, costing of the entire disease pathway in melanoma has not previously been attempted, nor costing at the level of the patient’s journey. These data and results should be considered a starting point: the entire patient journey is not fully captured, and much additional specificity can be developed with more data over time.
1955 1950
Symptoms showing after current medication
1945
Symptoms showing after current medication
Tiredness Numbness Sickness Swelling Hearing Hospitalisation
Tiredness Numbness Swelling Hearing Hospitalisation
Red
Brown
Yellow
Blue
Green
Red
Brown
Yellow
Blue
Green
Year of birth
2005 2000 1995 1990 1985 1980
Symptoms showing after any/all medication
1975
Symptoms showing after any/all medication
1970 1965 1960 1955 1950
Speech Sight Hearing
1945 Speech Sight
Year of birth
Table 1: Costliest resource within different domains
References
2005
¹Cancer Research UK. Melanoma skin cancer statistics. Available at: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/ cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/melanoma-skin-cancer#heading-Zero. Accessed: December 2020.
Adult participants, diagnosed with melanoma & living in the UK
Demographic & patientreported outcome (PRO) data collected regularly on the My Melanoma study app
Real-world data made accessible to researchers on realtime interactive dashboards
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