A model for estimating costs and benefits of new vaccine technologies from the perspective of both buyers and sellers.

Abstract

Although vaccination is widely considered one of the most cost-effective health interventions available, global coverage rates for many vaccines remain lower than necessary for disease elimination and eradication. New vaccine technologies can play an important role in addressing barriers to vaccination and increasing coverage rates. To identify and prioritize vaccine technology investments, decision makers must be able to compare the overall costs and benefits of each investment option. While these data points may exist, they are often confined to silos. Decision makers would benefit from a model that synthesizes this broad range of data and provides clear and actionable information. To facilitate vaccine investment, purchasing and deployment decisions, we developed a systematic and transparent cost-benefit model that estimates the value and risk of a given investment scenario from the perspective of both "buyers" (e.g., global donors, country governments) and "sellers" (e.g., developers, manufacturers) of vaccines. This model, which can be used to evaluate scenarios related to a single vaccine presentation or a portfolio of vaccine presentations, leverages our published approach for estimating the impact of improved vaccine technologies on vaccination coverage rates. This article presents a description of the model and provides an illustrative example application to a portfolio of measles-rubella vaccine technologies currently under development. Although the model is generally applicable to organizations involved in vaccine investment, manufacturing or purchasing, we believe it may be particularly useful to those engaged in vaccine markets that rely strongly on funding from institutional donors.