An Exploratory Analysis of the Cost-Effectiveness of a Multi-cancer Early Detection Blood Test Compared with Standard of Care Screening in Ontario, Canada

Determining whether multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests are cost effective is important in deciding whether they should be included in the clinical path of cancer care, especially for cancers where screening tools do not exist. The main objective of this study is to determine the cost effectiveness of including a MCED screening regimen together with existing provincial screening protocols for selected cancers that are prevalent in Ontario, Canada, among average risk persons aged 50–75 years. The selected cancers include breast, colorectal, lung, esophageal, liver, pancreatic, stomach, and ovarian. Cost effectiveness was estimated from a provincial Ministry of Health perspective. A state-transition Markov model representing the decision path of both the proposed and existing screening strategies along the natural history of the selected types of cancers was implemented. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was calculated using data from available literature and the guidelines published by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) for conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis, which included a discount rate of 1.5