METHODS article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1631676
Economic Evaluation of a Digital Health Intervention for Preventing Dementia in Canadians with Mild Cognitive Impairment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- 2Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden
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Dementia poses an on-going Canadian challenge due to an aging population, with cases projected to rise significantly by 2050. This study evaluates the cost-effectiveness of a conceptual digital health intervention designed to prevent dementia in Canadians with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The analysis is exploratory and conceptual, comparing different scenarios for the possible effectiveness of the digital intervention for dementia prevention. Using data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 study, a long-term economic evaluation was conducted from a healthcare payer perspective, comparing intervention costs to usual care between 2030 and 2050. Health outcome was assessed using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted. The analysis revealed favorable incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) well below conventional willingness-to-pay thresholds across all scenarios. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of these findings, underscoring the intervention's potential to cost-effectively reduce dementia burden. The findings are based on modeled assumptions in the absence of empirical efficacy data and should therefore be interpreted with caution until validated in real-world settings. Yet, these results provide valuable insights for Canadian policymakers on scalable, proactive dementia prevention strategies.
Keywords: Dementia, prevention, digital health intervention, cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs), Mild Cognitive Impairment
Received: 23 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fereshtehnejad, Keshavjee and Coyte. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Seyed-Mohammad Fereshtehnejad, Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 3M6, Ontario, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.