Dr Ranjeeta Thomas OLD 1.10

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

Resource allocation is at the heart of decision-making in the health care sector. Economic evaluation is an approach used to support decision-makers in allocating resources by providing tools to compare the costs and benefits associated with multiple alternative scenarios or interventions.

This course will enable students to understand and apply the analytic methods used in the economic evaluation of health interventions. By the end of the course, students are expected to:

• know the different approaches of economic evaluations (cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit, cost-utility etc);
• understand the main principles and practices of measuring and analysing costs and effects of health care interventions;
• understand and be able to construct a decision-analytic model to compare the costs and benefits of different interventions;
• understand and be able to apply some statistical methods to deal with uncertainty in economic evaluations.

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

A piece of formative coursework will be set in the middle of the term, and feedback provided to students.

The following are basic readings for the course: 

Drummond MF, Sculpher MJ, Claxton K, Stoddart GL, Torrance GW (2015). Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes. Fourth edition: Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gray A, Clarke P, Wolstenholme J, Wordsworth S (2011) Applied Methods of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Health Care, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

More technical and advanced textbooks, especially for statistical analysis.

Briggs A, Sculpher M, Claxton K (2006). Decision Modelling for Health Economic Evaluation. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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%, 3000 words) in the LT.

Assessment is through a project that students will undertake in small groups and write up individually (3,000 word paper), to be submitted at the end of the course.