Dr Ranjeeta Thomas COW 2.07

This course is compulsory on the Executive MSc in Health Economics and Policy (LSE and Chicago). This course is not available as an outside option.

This course will introduce students to the basic notions of economic evaluation including cost-benefit analysis, cost-utility analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis as applied to the health care sector. The course will discuss notions of welfare economics and extra-welfarism, the identification and measurement of resource costs when markets do not exist (shadow prices), the measurement of health outcomes (including life years gained and Quality Adjusted life-years gained (QALYs)), methods of discounting and the basic calculations involved in estimating the cost-effectiveness of new health care technologies, including Markov modelling. The definition of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) will be outlined, as will the treatment of uncertainty (including structural (model) uncertainty, sensitivity analysis, and multivariate, parameter uncertainty). The use of bootstrap elements to estimate standard errors for the ICER will be described. Presentation of results, including the use of Acceptability curves, will also be covered. Finally, the use of cost-effectiveness in pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement will also be detailed.

This course will be delivered online over a period of five weeks in Michaelmas Term as a combination lectures and seminars. Students will have access to lecture material delivered as short online videos. Seminars will take place online and students will work in small groups on structured learning activities set by the course lead.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT.

The formative assessment an essay (max 1000 words) critically appraising a published paper based on a few questions provided to students. 

Briggs,A. Claxton, K. and Schulpher, M, 2007, Decision Modelling for Economic Evaluation, Oxford, OUP

Drummond, M., Schulpher, M., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. and Torrance, G., 2016, Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes, Oxford, OUP,

Economic Evaluation in Health Care: Merging Theory with Practice, 2001, Edited by M. Drummond and A. McGuire, Oxford, OUP

Meltzer, D., 2013, Future costs in medical cost-effectiveness in Jones, A., editor The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar

Raikou, M and McGuire, A. Measuring costs for cost-effectiveness analysis in Jones, A., editor The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar

Essay (80%, 3000 words) in the LT.
Continuous assessment (20%) in the MT.