Cost-Effectiveness of Flash Glucose Monitoring for the Management of Patients with Type 1 and Patients with Type 2 Diabetes in China

Introduction To compare the cost-effectiveness of flash glucose monitoring versus self-monitoring of blood glucose/point of care testing (SMBG/POCT) in both patients with type 1 and patients with type 2 diabetes (T1D/T2D) receiving insulin therapy. Methods The IQVIA CORE Diabetes Model (version 9.5) was used to project the lifetime costs and health outcomes of flash glucose monitoring and SMBG/POCT from a Chinese societal perspective. We considered both hospital and individual version flash glucose monitoring to reflect the clinical practice in China. The clinical inputs leveraged the outcomes from both clinical trials and real-world studies. Cohort characteristics, intervention costs, treatment-related disutility and mortality were extracted from the literature. We also conducted scenario analyses and probabilistic sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of results. Results Compared with SMBG/POCT using efficacy results from clinical trial, flash glucose monitoring brought the incremental costs of Chinese yuan (CNY) 58,021 and CNY 90,997 and additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of 1.22 and 0.65 for patients with T1D and patients with T2D, respectively. According to the “WHO-CHOICE threshold” of three times the gross domestic product per capita in China (CNY 217,341 in 2020) as cost-effectiveness threshold, flash glucose monitoring was cost-effective for both patients with T1D and patients with T2D with incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) of CNY 47,636 and CNY 140,297 per QALY gained, respectively. According to the real-world effectiveness data, flash glucose monitoring was dominant for patients with T1D (lower costs and better effectiveness) and cost-effective for patients with T2D with an ICER of CNY 124,169 per QALY gained compared with SMBG/POCT. Scenario analyses and probabilistic sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the results. Conclusion Flash glucose monitoring is likely to be considered as a cost-effective strategy compared to SMBG/POCT for Chinese patients with T1D and patients with T2D receiving insulin therapy.