This module will introduce you to the rationale, principles, and methods for economic evaluation in health care. It focuses on the main practical and theoretical issues related to economic evaluation including cost benefit analyses, cost-effectiveness analyses and cost-utility analyses. Finally, the module explores the policy implications of using economic evaluation as a guide to decision making in health care, thus ensuring that the use of theory and methods is well grounded in real-world applications. The module will provide you with the skills and knowledge needed to critically understand the different methods of economic evaluation in health care, their theoretical foundations and the implications for research and policy of different methodologies.

At the end of this module you should be able to:

Conduct your own simple Economic Evaluations.
	Identify the common forms of Economic Evaluation and understand when they are most appropriately applied.
	Understand the different theoretical foundations of the economic evaluation of health care.
	Describe the different types of costs related to health care, and how they are measured.
	Describe the different types of outcomes related to health care interventions, and how they are measured and valued.
	Understand the need for equity considerations in economic evaluations of health care.
	Describe sources of uncertainty and how uncertainty should be represented in economic evaluations.
	Critically review the quality and usefulness of economic evaluation of health care as commonly presented in published literature.
	Apply different economic evaluation methodologies to real world examples and engage with policy discourse around the application of economic evaluation data.
The module is core for MSC Health Economics and Decision Science students and it is open to students on other IGH and UCL MSc/PG Dip students.

Economic evaluation in healthcare requires you to have basic excel skills. This is a self-directed interactive online module and you will therefore have a combination of online video-lectures (lecture-casts and screen-casts), individual practical exercises, online discussion forums and private readings. Note that students are asked to complete several practicals with specific deadlines. The material will be available in advance of the start of the course. Tutors will be available to provide prompt replies during the weeks the module is running and solutions after the deadlines.

Recommended Text Books:

Drummond, M. F.; Sculpher, M. J.; Claxton, K.; Stoddart, G. L. and Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes, (4th edition), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
	Drummond, M. F. and McGuire, A. (2001). Economic evaluation in health care: merging theory with practice. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
	Gray, A.M., Clarke, P.M., Wolstenholme, J.L., Wordsworth, S. (2011). Applied Methods of Cost-effectiveness Analysis in Healthcare (Handbooks in Health Economic Evaluation). Oxford, Oxford University Press.