The module will provide training on the methods currently used for modelling diseases in a population. The module will describe the main modelling techniques used to estimate characteristics of an epidemic, such as prevalence and incidence over time, and to predict morbidity/mortality. The course will be taught through a combination of lectures and supported practical tutorials, giving students an opportunity to apply recently acquired skills. Different types of disease models will be presented through the course. Practical lectures will follow theory ones, enabling students to develop foundation skills and then to scaffold onto those foundations, a more advanced understanding of the material and an ability to apply the methods.

The module will be delivered through a comibnation of lectures and practical sessions.

Aims 

This module aims to provide students with the appropriate skills to understand the basic principles underpinning disease-modelling work to a level that will enable them to work with modellers in the future. Technical overview of current methods will be taught together with the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, and students will also be given opportunities to develop hands-on experience of using these approaches to help learning about what it means to model the acquisition of a disease in a real-life scenario. The module will enable students to take more advanced disease modelling training requiring coding. This module is highly relevant for interdisciplinary research and it will give the students the possibility to expand the boundaries of scientific dialogue and tackle problems from a different perspective.

Learning Objectives 

At the end of the course, the students should be able to read and understand a modelling paper, have meaningful dialogue with modellers on epidemiologic data and understand how modelling results can inform epidemiological and economic studies by applying basic modeling techniques to the study of epidemiology. They will be able to create a basic model studying a specific disease according to different research questions.

Reading list

Vynnycky E, White R. An introduction to infectious disease modelling. OUP oxford; 2010 May 13.

Pinsky M, Karlin S. An introduction to stochastic modeling. Academic press; 2010 Nov 18.

Neumann PJ, Sanders GD, Russell LB, Siegel JE, Ganiats TG, editors. Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine. Oxford University Press; 2016 Oct 3.