Advanced topics in health economic evaluation methods

About the course

In the main part of the course, decision modeling is explained, discussed and practiced. In economic evaluations of health interventions using a decision-maker perspective it is often necessary to gather information from many sources and track the course of a disease for at relatively long time perspective taking into account the uncertainty of estimates used this way. To do this, decision modeling is becoming increasingly popular in health economic evaluation. In the course, different modeling techniques are being explored and the students given a chance to set up and run their own models.

In addition to this, several topics that have been covered to a certain extent in the preceding course, Health Economic Evaluation Methods, will be studied further. To these topics belong questions of costing and discounting, the treatment of productivity costs, willingness to pay approaches, the possibility of ageism in standard health economic evaluation and gender aspects on health economic evaluation.

After completion of the course the student should be able to: explain how one can model the course of a disease in a population and discuss how this can be used in economic evaluations; explain and discuss how uncertainty is being considered in economic evaluations; explain and discuss different ways of treating costs for health care in economic evaluations; review economic evaluations that have been done in health care with respect to the main questions that have been focused in the course.

Teaching on the course is concentrated to two weeks during the course period. Teaching is conducted through lectures, group exercises and computer exercises. There are also seminars where students present and discuss a model that they have developed on their own. Attendance is compulsory at these seminars. Teaching is given in English.