About the Book:

In financially constrained health systems across the world, increasing emphasis is being placed on the ability to demonstrate that health care interventions are not only effective, but also cost-effective. Decision must be made on issues such as medical devices, diagnostic technologies, surgical procedures, and Pharmaceuticals. Researchers are therefore required to incorporate all technologies with the alternative options, and to reflect uncertainty in evidence in the conclusion of the analysis. Decision-analytic modeling is commonly used as the framework for meeting these requirements.

Contents:

1.    Introduction

2.    Key aspects of decision modelling for economic evaluation

3.    Further developments in decision analytic models for economic evaluation

4.    Making decision models probabilistic

5.    Analysing and presenting simulation output from probabilistic models

6.    Decision-making, uncertainty and the value of information

7.    Efficient research design

About the Authors:

Andrew Briggs was appointed to the Lindsay Chair in Health Policy and Economic Evaluation in June 2005. Previously he held the position of Reader in Health Economics at the University of Oxford's Health Economic Research Centre (HERC).

Karl Claxton holds an adjunct appointment at Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Health and Decision Sciences. He is part of a committee that appraises new and existing health care technologies and issues guidance for the NHS on the use of these technologies. He has also contributed to the Task Group which developed guidance for the appraisal of health technologies for NICE. He is co-editor of the Journal of Health Economics.

Mark Sculpher is Director of the Programme on Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment at the University of York. He has previously worked at the Health Economics Research Group at Brunel University, and in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University in Canada. He is a member of the NICE Technology Appraisal Committee and he chaired NICE's Task Group on methods guidance for economic evaluation. He is also a member of the Commissioning Board for the NHS Health Technology Assessment programme. He is on the editorial boards of Medical Decision Making, Health Expectations and the Journal of Applied Health Economics and Policy.