Abstracts

Rationale: IntroductionEpilepsy is a condition affecting more than 65 million worldwide with as many as 30-40% of patients with epilepsy essentially misdiagnosed on first visit.  Proper diagnosis and management can take up to ten years, requiring expensive imaging, EEG tests and years of medication titration. This can be a financial burden on a patient and may result in poor outcomes. BackgroundThe EpiFinder app is a novel clinical decision support and screening tool.  In a pilot study at Mayo Clinic’s epilepsy monitoring unit, the EpiFinder app was shown to be 86.8% accurate, 86.4% sensitive, and 85.1% specific in screening for individuals with epilepsy.  If applied sooner, this has the potential to shorten the diagnosis and treatment gap and improve patient outcomes. Methods: The economic model was made by analyzing the average cost per epilepsy patient and multiplying it by the average number of epilepsy patients to find the total amount of money to analyze. By then seeing how many patients could be diagnosed properly with the EpiFinder app, approx. 2/3, this amount was found and subtracted from the first amount. In this manner, it was shown that there is approximately $6.7B in savings from using the app and approximately $2,878 saved per person. Results: The economic model illustrated that the average patient with epilepsy, with the utilization of the app, could save up to $2,878 per person with an approximate total of $6.7B in savings. This shows how viable the EpiFinder app is when used to give epilepsy patients the correct diagnosis.  Conclusions: The Mayo Clinic trial results combined with the potential savings from our economic model, demonstrate how utilization of the EpiFinder app on first visit can be an important step towards reducing misdiagnosis of epilepsy and improving treatment earlier, which may result in reduced cost to the system and better patient outcomes. The economic model illustrated that the average patient with epilepsy, with the utilization of the app, could save up to $2,878 per person with an approximate total of $6.7B in savings. Funding: No funding