Prof Alistair Mcguire Cowdray House 4.05

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

This course assumes knowledge of elementary mathematics and statistics. Students who wish to take HP425, but who have not taken an introductory university course in statistics or econometrics, may wish to consider auditing MY451 (Introduction to Quantitative Analysis) in Michaelmas Term in order to prepare themselves for this course. Students who are unsure whether they have the requisite background are encouraged to approach the Lecturer before the start of Lent Term.

This course is envisaged to be complementary to HP422 (Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Health Care), which is offered in Michaelmas Term.

This course develops the statistical and modelling techniques necessary to apply economic evaluation to the health care sector. Introduction to random variables and probability distribution, linear regression analysis, logistic regression analysis, survival analysis for health outcomes, survival analysis for treatment costs, parametric and non-parametric approaches for missing data, economic evaluation and clinical trials. Estimation of confidence intervals for cost-effectiveness ratios. Transformation of ratios - net benefit approach. Presentation of results, acceptability curves.

This is the same course as HP4B5E Statistical Methods in Health Care Economic Evaluation (modular), but it has different teaching and assessment arrangements.

20 hours of lectures and 20 hours of computer workshops in the LT. 1 hour of lectures in the ST.

1,500 word essay

A full reading list is provided at the start of the course. The course makes use of selected parts of the following texts:

• M Drummond & A McGuire (eds), Economic Evaluation in Health Care: Merging Theory with Practice, OUP, 2001.
• D Machin, YB Cheung & MKB Parmar, Survival analysis: a practical approach, 2nd edn, Wiley, 2006.
• J Klein & M Moeschberger, Survival Analysis: Techniques for Censored and Truncated Data, 2nd edn, Springer, 2005.
• M Cleves, W Gould, R Gutierrez & Y Marchenko, An Introduction to Survival Analysis Using Stata, 3rd edn, Stata, 2010.
• M Drummond, M Schulpher, K Claxton, G Stoddart & G Torrance, Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes, 4th edn, OUP, 2015.
• M Gold, J Siegel, L Russell & M Weinstein, Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, OUP, 1996.
• M Johannesson, Theory and Methods of Economic Evaluation of Health Care, Kluwer, 1996.
• P Johansson, Evaluating Health Risks: An Economic Approach, CUP, 1995.

Project (50%, 2500 words) and essay (50%, 2500 words) in the LT.

The project will consist of a Stata based exercise, where a statistical problem will be set using data the students will have used in prior computer workshops. The aim of the exercise will be to assess the students’ ability to undertake some statistical estimation, present the output and comment on the interpretation of the estimators.

Both assessments will be due towards the end of the LT / beginning of the ST. More information will be given at the beginning of the course.