Uptake

Uptake is the rate at which an eligible population adopts a new health technology, treatment, or intervention. It is a key concept in health economics and public health, representing the proportion of people who receive a specific product or service over time. Uptake can be influenced by various factors, such as clinical guidelines, patient preferences, provider training, and the availability of resources.

In budget impact analyses, it is usual to compare a hypothetical future scenario (i.e. the approval of a new technology) against the counterfactual (i.e. no approval of the technology). Because it is rare for a new technology to be provided universally to all eligible patients, budget impact models usually make an assumption about the uptake of the technology. This is usually characterised as the proportion of patients that would receive the technology in each consecutive year after its introduction. Often, the uptake may start slowly (with a low % of patients) and gradually increase over time. Careful consideration should be given to whether the new technology will be made available only to new (incident) patients, to existing (prevalent) patients, or to both.