Efficacy: Efficacy is a measure of how well an intervention works in ideal conditions. It’s typically determined in controlled settings, like in a lab or a clinical trial. Researchers measure the effectiveness of the intervention in a highly controlled environment, with a homogeneous group of participants, and under ideal conditions to determine the efficacy of the intervention. This helps to understand how well the intervention works in an ideal scenario, free from any external factors that might affect the results.

Effectiveness: Effectiveness is a measure of how well an intervention works in real-world settings. It’s determined by measuring the effectiveness of the intervention in a real-world setting, such as in a community or in a clinical practice, with a group of participants that are diverse and represent the typical population, and under typical (real-world) conditions. This helps to understand how well the intervention works in the actual environment where it’s intended to be used, taking into account the variations and complexities of the real-world scenarios.

Efficiency: Efficiency refers to how well the resources used by an intervention align with the outcomes achieved. Researchers measure the resources used, such as time or money, in relation to the outcomes achieved, like the number of people helped or the level of improvement, to determine the intervention’s efficiency. This helps to understand how well the intervention is utilizing the resources available to it and how much it costs to achieve a certain level of outcome. It’s a way to measure how effectively the resources are used to achieve the desired results.

In summary, Efficacy refers to how well an intervention works in ideal conditions, Effectiveness refers to how well it works in real-world settings, and Efficiency refers to how resources are used to achieve the desired outcomes.

Hi All,

Efficacy:
This is measure of effect under ideal condition, for example, in well-designed double-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT). The main idea of efficacy is that it is the effect of intervention in minimized biases and confounders setting.

Effectiveness:
This is the measure of ‘real life’ condition. For example, the study of drug effect in disease prevention in the clinical practice. Based on the real life in nature, this allow us to see the real effect of intervention when you use in the real setting (not the tightly controlled environment which is not possible to do in the real life).

Efficiency:
This is the measure of intervention effect in consideration of cost-effectiveness. The cost to be considered may included both direct cost, indirect cost and others. This cost is also varied among settings. For example, Use of Drug A to prevent coronary heart disease is considered cost-effective in USA but not in Thailand.

Efficacy, effectiveness, and efficiency are three distinct principles in an experimental study, but they can be interrelated. I distinguish these three meanings and how they are respectively related.

Efficacy indicates to what extent an intervention can create a beneficial change or achieve certain results in ideal circumstances where all factors are controlled. This usually concerns the results of laboratory clinical trials conducted on a population where researchers can control the size, such as research that aims to assess the efficacy of a newly produced Covid-19 vaccine. The efficacy data generated from the experimental research will be useful for evaluating effectiveness.

In contrast to efficacy, effectiveness talks about to what extent the beneficial results/outcomes/changes are achieved from an intervention carried out in real conditions where the factors cannot be controlled. To illustrate, the government will definitely choose a type of vaccine with a high level of efficacy to be used in Covid-19 mass vaccination program. In the following months, an antibody serological survey was conducted to measure the health outcome in terms of the SARS-CoV antibody. Of course, a product with high efficacy, could not always match the non-ideal conditions that occur in real life. It is generally concluded that effectiveness will be versus efficacy because the effectiveness rate is lower than the efficacy.

Efficiency is about doing things in the most efficient way, whether in terms of time, effort, or money. In controlling Covid-19, the government can effectively apply the right vaccine, but not necessarily use an efficient method. Two comparison vaccines with a high efficacy rate may effective in producing high levels of antibodies, but if one is much more expensive than the other, the vaccine will not be considered efficient.

In conclusion, the three outcome measures are different but interrelated. They can illustrate a meaningful sequence and produce good evidence-based research for disease control program.

Efficacy is capacity for beneficial changes following an intervention under ideal or controlled conditions. For example, a new vaccine shows an efficacy in preventing people from infection of a particular disease. The efficacy can be summarized according to the finding of pre-clinical trial.

Effectiveness links to the notion of external validity which effects the efficacy. For instance, the new vaccine has little effectiveness in immunocompromised patients whose immunity cannot be boosted.

Efficiency is about doing thing right under a limited condition. For example, selecting right people at risk to receive vaccine and good distribution of Covid-19 vaccine lead to high efficiency of vaccination and disease control.

Efficacy
Efficacy refers to the ability of an intervention to produce a beneficial effect in a highly controlled environment, such as a clinical trial. Essentially, it measures the intervention’s performance under ideal conditions.

Effectiveness
it is equally important to assess the intervention’s effectiveness in real-world settings, where conditions are not as controlled as in a clinical trial. Effectiveness measures the ability of an intervention to produce a beneficial effect in practical circumstances.

Efficiency
This refers to the cost-effectiveness of the intervention or the extent to which its benefits outweigh its costs. In other words, it measures the intervention’s value for money and is important when deciding whether to implement a particular intervention.

Efficacy is the effect outcome which is from the measurement under controlled or ideal conditions. The efficacy study, such as Randomized control trials, will be done under strict inclusion/exclusion criteria and intervention. The result from efficacy measurement might be limited to generalizations depending on the population included in the trial. However, bias in this type of research is controlled and the efficacy outcome could answer whether the intervention worked or not?

Effectiveness is the effect outcome which is from the measurement under real life conditions or in real clinical practice. Observational studies are able to measure effectiveness of the intervention.The effectiveness study will be done in more flexible environments compared to the efficacy study. Therefore, there is possibly bias, confounding and interfering with the results. However, heterogeneity of the population in the study can generate broader result application and answer the question “Does the intervention benefit the patient?”

Efficiency is the effect outcome which is from the measurement of the interventions’ benefit along with the cost consideration. Cost-benefit and cost effectiveness analysis are examples of studies where efficiency is measured. The cost consideration could be in terms of time, energy, or money. For instance, if there are two medicines with the same effectiveness, the one which is more costly could be considered less efficient in comparison with the one which is cheaper. Measuring efficiency could answer the question “Does the intervention work in the most economical way?”

Efficacy is the benefit/performance of new medicines on intervention under controlled conditions or ideal circumstances.

Effectiveness is a real performance/intervention under the real-world conditions. In another words, whether it achieves a desired effects on patients in normal clinical conditions. For example, randomized controlled trials conduct to compare effectiveness between two drugs under normal clinical conditions.

Efficiency has cost and economic aspect involved. It looks through on cost-effective whether the benefit of medicines worth the expenses that have to be paid compared to outcomes.

The terms efficacy and effectiveness are frequency used in health care. The first term, efficacy is the ability of a treatment to work in ideal or controlled conditions, whereas effectiveness is the ability of a treatment to work in real-world settings.

Efficiency, on the other hand, is a term referred to the ratio of the output to the inputs of any system. It is commonly used term in an economical aspect (i.e. cost-effectiveness of the intervention and an outcome) . To give an example, a high efficacy drug in trial might be high, yet the cost spent on the treatment is no superior than the conventional treatment. Thus, it is not considered efficient, or not cost-effectiveness.

Efficacy: Efficacy refers to how well an intervention works and measures the ability of an intervention to produce a desired effect in a highly controlled environment. It is often assessed in randomized controlled trials. The goal of an efficacy study is to demonstrate that the intervention has a statistically significant effect on the outcome being measured

Effectiveness: Effectiveness refers to how well an intervention works under real-world conditions and it measures an intervention’s cost-effectiveness. effectiveness studies usually designed to evaluate whether an intervention is useful and practical when applied to real world situations, and they can provide valuable information on the feasibility of implementing interventions.

Efficiency: Efficiency refers to the cost-effectiveness of an intervention and measures the ratio of the resources required to achieve the desired outcome while using resources. Efficiency studies are to check if an intervention is worth the resources required to implement it

Efficacy is the ability to create the expected effect of a given intervention under ideal, very specific and controlled conditions. For example, drug efficacy, vaccine efficacy. It’s rarely used this term outside of pharmacological and clinical trials. Effectiveness is about how well the intervention works in the real world, outside of the perfectly controlled conditions. It like to test how much the results of efficacy trials are applicable to practical life.An example of medical research and its measurement, in asthma trial, efficacy measurement is FEV1 and effectiveness measurement is hospitalization rate.

Efficiency refers to the ratio of output to the input, the cost-effectiveness of the intervention. For example, two drugs could be equally effective to improve patients’ symptoms in the real world, however, if one drug is more costly, that one is less efficiency.

Efficacy refers to the capability of an intervention to produce a desired outcome or effect in a controlled or ideal setting. For example, the efficacy of new flu vaccine has been shown in a randomized controlled trial to reduce the incidence of influenza in healthy individuals by a certain percentage.

Effectiveness is a measure of how well an intervention performs in real-world settings, demonstrating its ability to produce meaningful effects. For instance, to identify the effectiveness of a new asthma medication with the reducing of frequency and severity of asthma attacks in patients who use it regularly.

Efficiency is the ability to provide interventions using minimal resources, time, or effort, while still having the desired outcome in an economical manner. For example, the hospital may use telemedicine to provide consultations for certain types of appointments, and communicate with healthcare providers remotely, which results in more efficient use of healthcare resources and better patient outcomes.

Efficacy is usually used in scientific setting under very specific and controlled conditions. It indicates whether the intervention can achieve the desired result or not.

Effectiveness is the measure of how well the intervention is in the real-world settings. It might be sometimes difficult to achieve high effectiveness even the interventions have good efficacy because there are many unpredictable and uncontrollable factors in real life.

Efficiency is different from the prior two points above since it is not only about performance. But it also considers the input. Efficiency measures outputs and inputs. Some interventions might have good efficacy and effectiveness but very undesired efficiency. For instance, some intervention that can provide good effectiveness but consume a lot of budget and workforce.