Health systems model shows cost-effectiveness of screening amoxicillin quality

Author: Marya Lieberman

Sarah Bliese's paper with the Ozawa group at NC State is now published!  Sachiko Ozawa's group developed an agent-based model, ESTEEM (Examining Screening Technologies with Economic Evaluations for Medicines), to estimate the effectiveness and cost savings of incorporating PADs and aPADs in amoxicillin quality surveillance in Kenya. We compared the current testing scenario (batches of entire samples tested by HPLC) with an expedited HPLC scenario (testing smaller batches at a time), as well as a screening scenario using PADs/aPADs to identify poor-quality amoxicillin followed by confirmatory analysis with HPLC. The PADs/aPADs screening scenario identified and removed poor-quality antibiotics faster than the expedited or regular HPLC scenarios, and reduced costs significantly. The model estimates that use of early screening tests could avert 360-870 pneumonia deaths per year in children under age 5 while reducing the number of HPLC tests required. 

“Cost savings of paper analytical devices (PADs) to detect substandard and falsified antibiotics: Kenya case study,” Hui-Han Chen , Colleen Higgins, Sarah Laing ,
Sarah Bliese , Marya Lieberman and Sachiko Ozawa, Medicine Access@Point of Care, 2021, 5, 1–11