Two New Approaches for Telemedicine Economic Evaluation: Contingent Evaluation and Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (Deux Approches Nouvelles Pour L'evaluation Economique De La Telemedecine: L'evaluation Contingente Et L'Analyse Multicritere)

Abstract

Telemedicine appears in a context of limited resources, and the economic evaluation of the telemedicine becomes a need to justify allocation choices between various existing projects. Economic assessment of telemedicine is based only on cost-effectiveness methods. The principal criterion of efficiency is the saved transport costs, compared with the costs of investment and maintenance. And, even if the majority of the projects are not profitable, we observe that telemedicine practice diffuses to the detriment of the economic conclusions. Thus, it is undeniable that other benefits appear and are not taken into account by this method, mainly human factors (measurement of patient satisfaction, quality of life, accessibility and organizational impact). In this paper, we propose to examine two others approaches to evaluate this complex medical practice: the contingent valuation and the multi-criteria decision making method. We try to propose a comprehensive framework of telemedicine evaluation and to apply it to the perinatality sector in Brittany.

Keywords: Telemedicine, Economic Evaluation, Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis, Contingent evaluation

JEL Classification: I18, H51