Addressing methodological and ethical issues in practicing health economic evaluation in China

Health economic evaluations provide guidance for allocating resources and improving health outcomes. In low- and middle-income countries with limited health resources such as China, economic evaluation should have a more significant role than it does. However, several practical issues may hamper the development of economic evaluations in China, including cost inventory, measurement of health outcomes, thresholds for willingness-to-pay, validity and ethics of economic modeling, and the capacity of fast evaluation when public health crises emerge. Stakeholders of the health care sector should collaborate closely to address the challenges and to deliver sound economic evaluations.