Applied Methods of Cost‑effectiveness Analysis

Overview

This is an intensive online course for health economists and health professionals, with some knowledge of health economics who wish to learn about the methodology of cost-effectiveness analysis as applied in healthcare.  

Online courses are held via Zoom (live sessions only, no recordings).

Who is this course for?

The course is designed for those who need to perform cost-effectiveness analysis in healthcare and those who need to understand in some depth the issues that health economists face when performing these analyses, hence, researchers and decision makers from public, commercial and academic organisations concerned with healthcare resource allocation.

In the many years that the course has been running, participants have come from a wide variety of organisations and from all over the world. If you are unsure as to whether the course is suitable for you, please email and we will be happy to advise.

What is the course about?

Analytic methods of economic evaluation are applied in healthcare to address the fundamental economic question of how to allocate scarce healthcare resources to maximise health gain. This course teaches the latest methods for performing a cost-effectiveness analysis of a healthcare intervention.

Background

Standards of best practice in economic evaluation, required by health technology assessment and reimbursement agencies, and more recently by leading journals, have become more explicit and more demanding over time. The course provides the expertise to use and interpret the guidelines issued by official and professional bodies.

In addition, health economists are increasingly involved in complex studies: for example, conducting economic evaluations alongside large pragmatic trials running over a long period of time with multiple comparisons, multiple endpoints and incomplete patient specific data on resource use and quality of life. 

Even the largest and longest clinical trials do not remove the need for economic modelling, which may be required before, during, after and instead of trials. The course provides the tools for conducting such evaluations, alongside an introduction to economic modelling. The exercises that form part of the course enable participants to learn the techniques by direct experience.

Prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites for attendance, but participants need to be familiar with Microsoft Excel, and to have some prior knowledge of the principles of economic evaluation. We also run an Introduction to Health Economic Evaluation, designed for non-economists, which some have found to be useful to attend prior to undertaking this course.

If you do not feel confident working in Excel, please assess your competency prior to attending the course.

For online courses, two screens will be required – one to view the lectures and the other to view the exercises.

Aims of the course

•    To provide detailed study of the methods of cost-effectiveness analysis for healthcare interventions
•    To give participants ‘hands on’ experience through the use of computer-based exercises with real data
•    To broaden the knowledge base of researchers through the use of practical examples and problems

Course content

The taught sessions cover the following topics:

Course overview, introduction, and software orientation

Health outcomes

• Estimating life expectancy
• Life tables
• Survival analysis
• Quality of life measurement and valuation

Resource use and costs

• Describing cost data
• Testing for cost differences
• Missing and censored cost data
• Event Based Cost Analysis

Decision analysis and modelling

• Role of modelling
• Decision trees
• Introducing Markov models

Reporting and presenting cost-effectiveness results

• Bootstrapping
• Displaying results on the CE plane
• Confidence intervals for CE ratios
• Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves
• The net benefit approach

As well as the teachers, an expert team of tutors will be on hand to complete the exercises (including in break-out room sessions for the online version). 

The course will be taught in English, and attendees will receive an electronic certificate upon completion. Please note that the online sessions are live and will not be recorded.