Health economic evaluation studies in India's traditional system of medicine (Ayush): A scoping review.

Health economic studies offer valuable insights for improving healthcare decision-making and optimizing resource use. India's traditional medical systems, known as Ayush, are globally recognized. To document health economic studies in Ayush, we conducted a scoping review to examine their characteristics. We used a set of keywords as finalized by field experts to search in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and the Ayush research databases, and the reference lists of selected studies to retrieve the relevant studies until August 2023. Two independent reviewers used the Rayyan web tool to screen the titles, abstracts, and full texts of selected studies. We extracted the information and presented the descriptive data as numbers and proportions. We reviewed 49 studies for data extraction, primarily focusing on Homeopathy and Yoga, each with 19 studies, followed by Naturopathy (n = 5), Ayush/combined (n = 5), and Ayurveda (n = 1). About one-third of the studies were full economic evaluations (n = 17). The majority of full and partial economic evaluation studies were conducted in Yoga (n = 11) and Homeopathy (n = 16), respectively. Most studies covered musculoskeletal diseases (n = 13), and more than half of the diseases belong to noncommunicable diseases (n = 28). The majority of the research studies were published in Q1 journals (n = 18). Health economic evaluation studies in Ayush are limited, yet their utilization and market size are growing. To support resource allocation and decision-making, comprehensive economic evaluation studies on Siddha, Unani, and Ayurveda systems are essential. This scoping review highlights the need to address existing knowledge gaps in this area.