Your Idea
Research Planning
Project Planning
Impact
The Role of the Health Economist
The health economist can offer specialist expertise that adds value to the research project and outcomes. There are many approaches to economic evaluation, the most common form being cost-effectiveness analysis. This looks at the financial cost associated with an intervention and the primary outcome measures often associated with clinical studies. These outcomes are often compared to existing clinical practices and products. They can also analyse outcomes in terms of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY). They can also look at Quality of Life (QoL) and devise models for varying patient groups. This is an important aspect of supporting equality, diversity and inclusion of patient populations.
The expertise to model economic measures means that techniques can be applied to creating and extrapolating costs and outcomes of the intervention beyond the timeframe of the research project offering additional information to key stakeholders and decision-makers.
Health economic modelling
Health economic modelling is a process for creating and comparing the costs and benefits of new (proposed) devices to be able to make a decision on whether or not the intervention will produce better/best patient outcomes in line with healthcare resource requirements. It is concerned with allocating health care resources to maximise economic impact of new treatments.
Health economists apply the theories of production, efficiency, disparities, competition, and regulation to make decisions on the most efficient, cost-effective course of action.
- What are the patient benefits and requirements
- Is there evidence to back your assessment
- Are there real health benefits
- Will the healthcare system benefit
- How broad will the HE impact be across the NHS
- Is the product safe
Economic Evaluation/Assessment
Economic evaluation is the process of comparing healthcare costs and health impact of alternative treatments. Data is collected from developmental and clinical evaluation of the device. Results are used by healthcare decision-makers such as NICE to determine whether or not to recommend the adoption of new treatments into routine practice.
Economic assessment forms the basis for providing a value proposition for the device and will be an important addition to the business case. It is important to deliver a clear value proposition to the key stakeholders.
A measure of health outcome is the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) calculated using the EQ-5D or EQ-5D-5L, a measure of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL). These are used to help develop future NICE guidelines.
For HE assessments consideration should be given to the following:
- Does the proposed product address an unmet medical need
- Will the proposed technology have an impact on patient outcomes or quality of life
- Is there a demand for the product
- How will the product be used by NHS
- What will be the impact on NHS resources
- Will the product replace existing devices
- How will current staff be affected by the implementation of technology into the pathway
- Is the correct health economics model being used
- Is correct data being collected
- Does model/data support value-based care with real-world evidence
- Does the primary measure of outcome capture all the benefits (and harms) of the proposed intervention compared to usual care
- Will generic health status measures (i.e. EQ-5D-5L) be sufficiently sensitive to capture the outcomes of the treatment compared to usual care