Dr Caroline Rudisill, COW 3.05

This course is available on the MSc Health Policy, Planning and Financing, MSc in Global Health, MSc in Health, Population and Society, MSc in International Health Policy and MSc in International Health Policy (Health Economics). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Theoretical foundations of health care economic evaluation. The design of a cost-effectiveness analysis and interpretation of cost-effectiveness ratios. Evaluations based on primary studies and evaluations based on mathematical models. Methods for measuring the outcomes of health care interventions. Survival, quality of life assessment and preference elicitation techniques. Methods for calculating QALYs and DALYs. Sources of data for cost analysis. Methods for dealing with uncertainty in cost-effectiveness analysis. The impact of economic evaluation on decision making in health care.

15 hours of lectures and 13 hours and 30 minutes of seminars in the MT.

A piece of formative coursework will be set and feedback provided to students.

The following are basic readings for the course: M Drummond et al, Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes, Oxford, OUP, 2005; M Drummond & A McGuire (Eds), Economic Evaluation in Health Care: Merging Theory with Practice, Oxford, OUP, 2002; Gray, A. Clarke, P.M, Wolstenholme, P., Wordsworth, S. Applied Methods of Cost-effectiveness Analysis in Healthcare (Handbooks in Health Economic Evaluation), Oxford, OUP, 2011.

Supplementary Reading List

This is made available on Moodle along with all other course materials, and includes references to specialised texts and articles on each subject covered within the course.

Project (100%, 2000 words) in the LT.

Assessment is through a project that students will undertake in small groups and write up individually (2,000 word paper), to be submitted at the end of the course.