A method for calculating per-case costs of artificial intelligence-assisted diagnostics and evaluating its regional economic efficiency

Objective: To develop and validate a method for evaluating the regional economic efficiency of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into target disease (TD) detection compared to conventional diagnostics.

Material and methods. Medical data from 381 patients with skin neoplasms (291 benign and 90 malignant cases) were analyzed to develop and validate a method of economic efficiency evaluation. Two diagnostic routing scenarios were simulated: AI-assisted routing (62% threshold) and conventional three-stage routing without AI. The assessment involved calculating financial costs per each identified TD case and for all its cases in the region.

Results. With the use of the Derma Onko Check AI program, the proportion of unreasonable referrals decreased from 40.6% to 6.9% for dermatologists/venereologists and from 22% to 7.6% for oncologists. Calculations performed using the developed method show that unreasonable financial costs per TD case (C43 skin melanoma) in the Moscow Region amounted to 282,268.98 rubles with the use of AI compared to 579,069.26 rubles with conventional diagnostics. The ratio of reasonable to unreasonable costs was 1.7 with the use of the AI (indicating a predominance of reasonable costs) and 0.31 without AI (where unreasonable costs exceed reasonable costs). When extrapolated to the regional level (Moscow, 1470 cases of skin melanoma in 2024), the potential reduction in unreasonable costs amounts to 436,296,411.6 rubles.

Conclusion. Using skin melanoma as an example, the developed method demonstrated the high economic efficiency of integrating AI into TD diagnostics. This technology provides a means to optimize patient routing, reduce the financial burden on the healthcare system, and ensure earlier detection of socially significant diseases. This method can be adapted to evaluate the economic efficiency of AI integration in diagnosis of other pathologies.

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