Evaluative approaches to type II diabetes.

In recent years, as a result of the rapid growth in the costs of health care, there has been an explosion of interest in the area of economic evaluation. Diabetes has emerged as an economic problem because of the increasing costs of treatments for diabetes and of educational programmes for patients with type II diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, NIDDM). In addition to the cost-of-illness analyses, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, and cost-benefit analyses are the major methods for evaluating the economic efficiency of diabetes treatments, and educational or control programmes. This article briefly reviews some conceptual issues relating to these evaluative methods; if the methods of estimating costs are generally similar for the different evaluative methods, the 3 forms of evaluation vary in the way they assess the outcomes. A more consistent application of recent methods of economic evaluation could improve understanding of the economic consequences of type II diabetes for the individual and society as a whole.