Global Heart | May 2021
Background: Despite the availability of effective and affordable treatments, only 14% of hypertensive Indians have controlled blood pressure. Increased hypertension treatment coverage (the proportion of individuals initiated on treatment) and adherence (proportion of patients taking medicines as recommended) promise population health gains. However, governments and other payers will not invest in a large-scale hypertension control program unless it is both affordable and effective. Objective: To investigate if a national hypertension control intervention implemented across the private and public sector facilities in India could save overall costs of CVD prevention and treatment. Methods: We developed a discrete-time microsimulation model to assess the cost-effectiveness of population-level hypertension control intervention in India for combinations of treatment coverage and adherence targets. Input clinical parameters specific to India were obtained from large-scale surveys such as the Global Burden of Disease as well as local clinical trials. Input hypertensive medication cost parameters were based on government contracts. The model projected antihypertensive treatment costs, avoided CVD care costs, changes in disability-adjusted life year (DALYs) and incremental cost per DALY averted (represented as incremental cost-effectiveness ratio or ICER) over 20 years.
Sarang Deo is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he also serves as the Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research and as the Executive Director of the Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM).
His primary area of research is health care delivery systems. He is interested in investigating the impact of operations decisions on population-level health outcomes. Some of the healthcare contexts that he has studied include the influenza vaccine supply chain and the phenomenon of ambulance diversion in the US, HIV early infant diagnosis networks in sub-Saharan Africa, and formal and informal pathways for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in India. He regularly collaborates with international public health funding and implementation agencies such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH for his research. He currently serves as a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on TB (STAG-TB).
Prior to joining ISB, Professor Deo was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. He holds a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management, an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, and a B Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Before entering academia, he worked with Accenture as a management consultant.
