In November 2020, ATscale, a global partnership for assistive technologies, launched a global AT investment case “The Case for Investing in Assistive Technology (AT)”, which showcased the benefits of scaling up access to AT1. The umbrella term AT includes devices and associated services that facilitate daily activities for a range of people including but not limited to those with chronic health conditions, older people, and people with disabilities. The global AT investment case report presented the results of the first full economic impact and cost- effectiveness analysis of investing in increased AT access and estimated a return on investment of 9:1 [1].
In addition to the global AT investment case, an Assistive Product Provision (APP) Costing Tool was developed in 2021 to aid users in costing assistive product provision packages to help plan future AT strategic plans. Given the economic, health, and social benefits of increasing access to AT and development of the AT costing tool, there was a necessity to develop a country level AT Investment Case methodology.
RHC has developed country level AT investment case methodology for the economic analysis and institutional context analysis (ICA) to make up a national AT investment case manual. The economic analysis methodology includes a country level AT economic model and data collection sheets to inform the economic model inputs. The proposed ICA methodology includes a research protocol for the pre-mission desktop research on the context of the participating country, key stakeholder interviews, and documentation of results, experiences, recommendations, and lessons learned in an ICA report. Lastly, RHC has also developed training materials for health economists in relation to aforementioned methodologies.
[1] ATscale. (2020). The Case for Investing in Assistive Technology.
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