AØKK08210U Health Economic Evaluations

Volume 2024/2025
Education

MSc programme in Economics – elective course

From spring 2024 the course is also offered to students at the

- Master Programmes in Anthropology

- Master Programmes in Global Development

- Master Programme in Political Science

- Master Programme in Social Data Science

- Master Programmes in Psychology

Enrolled students register the course through the Selfservice. Please contact the study administration at each programme for questions regarding registration.

 

The course is open to:

  • Exchange and Guest students from abroad
  • Credit students from Danish Universities
  • Open University students
Content

The course will give students an introduction to the principles of economic evaluations in health care. Topics include:

  • Foundations for economic evaluation
  • Critical assessment of clinical trials
  • Cost measurement
  • Budget impact and cost-of-illness
  • Cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and cost-utility
  • Outcome and preference measurement
  • Trial-based economic evaluations and decision-analytic modelling
  • How to present results and how to handle uncertainty
  • Value of information analysis
  • Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
  • Introduction to modelling methods in MS Excel
  • Prioritization in the Danish health care sector
Learning Outcome

After completing the course the student is expected to be able to:

 

Knowledge:

  • Explain the difference between welfarist and extra-welfarist approaches to health economic evaluations.
  • Explain differences between cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses.
  • Identify biases in clinical trial design and reporting.
  • Account for the methods and value of meta-analyses.
  • Define concepts related to preference measurement (including time trade-off and standard gamble) as well as common instruments (including EQ-5D).
  • Define the concepts of budget impact analysis and value of information analysis and their usefulness in healthcare decision-making.
  • Account for the difference between trial-based evaluations and decision-analytic models and the differences between alternative decision-analytic models including decision trees and Markov models.
  • Discuss the concepts of deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analysis and their ability to assess robustness of results.

 

Skills:

  • Discuss and assess the documented efficacy of a healthcare intervention.
  • Analyze cost-effectiveness analyses to determine the drivers of conclusions and assess their validity.

 

Competencies:

  • Determine if a particular healthcare intervention can be said to be cost effective or not by using the published literature.
  • Critically and independently assess health economic evaluations as published in the scientific literature.
  • Implement proper methods for analyzing cost-effectiveness of a new healthcare intervention.

  • Michael F. Drummond, Mark J. Sculpher, Karl Claxton, Greg L. Stoddart, and George W. Torrance: Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN 9780199665884 ( link),

  • Supplemented by a number of scientific articles.

There are no recommended academic prerequisites other than the study entry requirements.
Lectures. A number of these will include exercises, in which students will work individually or in groups getting hands-on experience with modelling.
Schedule:
3-4 hours lectures every week from week 6 to 17.
From week 17 there will be some individual guidance for writing the project.

The overall schema for the Master can be seen at KUnet:
MSc in Economics => "Courses and teaching" => "Planning and overview" => "Your timetable"

Timetable and venue:
To see the time and location of lectures please press the link under "Timetable"/​​"Se skema" at the right side of this page. F means Spring.


Please be aware:
- The schedule of the lectures can change without the participants´ acceptance. If this occure, you can see the new schedule in your personal timetable at KUnet, in the app myUCPH and through the links in the right side of this course description and the link above.
- It is the students´s own responsibility continuously throughout the study to stay informed about their study, their teaching, their schedule, their exams etc. through the curriculum of the study programme, the study pages at KUnet, student messages, the course description, the Digital Exam portal, Absalon, the personal schema at KUnet and myUCPH app etc.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 40
  • Preparation
  • 136
  • Project work
  • 30
  • Total
  • 206
Oral
Individual
Collective
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment, 3 weeks
Type of assessment details
The exam is a project.

Please be aware that:
• The project can be written individually or in groups of three students.
• The plagiarism rules and the rules for co-writing assignemnts must be complied.
• The students are allowed to discuss the project orally with other students at the course.
• The writing process of the project begins with handing in a project description, that must be approved. Thereafter the student writes the project paper.
• The project description and the project paper must be written in English.
Exam registration requirements

There are no requirements during the course that the student has to fulfill to be able to sit the exam.

Aid
All aids allowed

for the project paper.

Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
for the written exam.
Exam period

Exam information:

The examination date can be found in the exam schedule  here

More information is available in Digital Exam from the middle of the semester.

More information about examination, rules, aids etc. at Master(UK) and Master(DK).

Re-exam

Same as the ordinary exam. 

 

Reexam information:

The reexamination date/period can be found in the reexam schedule  here

More information in Digital Exam in August. 

More information about examination, rules, aids etc. at Master(UK), Master(DK)

Criteria for exam assesment

Students are assessed on the extent to which they master the learning outcome for the course.

 

In order to obtain the top grade “12”, the student must with no or only a few minor weaknesses be able to demonstrate an excellent performance displaying a high level of command of all aspects of the relevant material and can make use of the knowledge, skills and competencies listed in the learning outcomes.

 

In order to obtain the passing grade “02”, the student must in a satisfactory way be able to demonstrate a minimal acceptable level of  the knowledge, skills and competencies listed in the learning outcomes.