Discussion and conclusions

The case studies described in section 3 highlight the potential for efficiency gains across a range of priority areas as well as key challenges in achieving these gains. These have generated the following high-level insights, in addition to more specific lessons which are elaborated in section 3:

^{Interventions that rely on patient participation should make participation as easy as possible:}
^{Implementers of interventions that require health actors to take on new roles should be aware of, and take steps to mitigate, potential resistance due to cultural norms or existing incentive structures:}
^{Local data might be needed to tailor existing interventions to address the specific drivers of inefficiencies in a given context. Ongoing data collection allows for refinement of these interventions.}
^{The operational constraints of the broader health system should be considered when designing interventions.}

The absolute scale of efficiency gains in different healthcare systems will depend on the relative efficiency of each system. There is greater scope for efficiency gains in relatively less efficient systems, whilst the potential gains are smaller in relatively more efficient systems. Each healthcare system, therefore, must consider the relative efficiency and inefficiency of its different components when prioritising between efficiency initiatives such as those described above.

As the more successful cases show, meaningful efficiency gains are possible in every healthcare system. However, many of the less successful examples show that innovations cannot necessarily be directly applied between different systems without accounting for local organisational and cultural differences. The insights described above may be helpful in addressing this challenge, but are not necessarily easy to implement. For example, ongoing data collection to understand and refine initiatives is challenging given the continuous, urgent demands on many healthcare systems.

^{However, innovative approaches can produce potentially substantial efficiency gains across a range of therapeutic areas, improving health outcomes and freeing up resources that can be re-allocated to improve outcomes in other areas.}