Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA)

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a decision-making tool that helps compare different ways to achieve a goal in terms of their resource utilization (cost) and outcomes (effectiveness). It can be used to find the cheapest way to achieve a goal, or to estimate the expected costs of achieving a particular outcome. It can also be used to compare the impacts and cost of various alternative means of achieving the same objective. The result of a CEA is expressed in a ratio (cost-effectiveness ratio, CER) between cost and outcome.