Beyond cost: how to know if a medical technology actually adds value
A wealthy person can afford ₹50,000 a year to catch one cancer earlier, which is an excellent personal return on investment. But a government screening 1 lakh women would spend ₹500 crore and catch 20-30 cancers earlier. Representative photo.
| Photo Credit: navymedicine/Unsplash
Medicine treats the evaluation of emerging technologies as a technical problem, but it is not. It is fundamentally an economic problem.
When does a ₹30,000 genetic test represent excellent value and when does it represent wasted money? The answer depends on a question members of the medical profession almost never discuss: who’s paying?
Published – May 05, 2026 07:30 am IST
