Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA)

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a decision-making assistance tool that compares alternatives to achieve a goal with regard to their resource utilization (cost) and outcomes (effectiveness) (Bambha and Kim, 2004). CEA can be used to find the least cost means to achieve a goal, or to estimate the expected costs of achieving a particular outcome (Tietenberg and Lewis, 2011). It can also be used to compare the impacts and cost of various alternative means of achieving the same objective (Dhaliwal et al., 2012). The result of a CEA is expressed in a ratio (cost-effectiveness ratio, CER) between cost and outcome (Johannesson, 1995).