Our aim is to be the world-leading centre for health economic and health technology assessment research and education, working to improve health and wellbeing through better decision-making.

Overview

The Institute of Health & Wellbeing (IHW) spans medical and social sciences and offers students an opportunity to train in a unique and vibrant interdisciplinary environment.

Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment (HEHTA) covers a broad set of activities relating to the appraisal of health service interventions including policies, procedures, devices, medicines and diagnostics. Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is the assessment of relevant evidence on the effects and consequences of healthcare technologies. Our work contributes to priority-setting and decision-making in relation to preventative, diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitation strategies.

Postgraduate research (PGR) students in HEHTA graduate with a thorough and robust skillset that is transferable to future employment in academia and public, private and third sector organisations. Postgraduate research students’ development is supported by a programme of high quality internal training, a dedicated and cohesive team, and exposure to our extensive network of international colleagues. They also have access to the researcher training programmes in the Colleges of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences (MVLS) and the College of Social Sciences (CoSS). Our students’ work results in high quality publications and international conference presence, and contributes to HEHTA’s international reputation across our seven research themes.

Our research objectives are:

• through our new research theme of Global HTA, to devise innovative methodological and applied research in the international context, with a particular focus on low and middle income countries
• to strengthen our existing research portfolio by focusing on synergistic working across our research themes
• to produce high quality evidence-based research that is relevant and impactful
• to collaborate and engage with national and global policy makers to undertake relevant research and influence decision-making.

Individual research projects are tailored around the expertise of principal investigators within HEHTA, the Institute of Health & Wellbeing, and the student’s interests. Our supervisors use a variety of approaches to research including decision analysis modelling, cost benefit and effectiveness analyses, risk and prediction modeling, data linkage and advanced meta-analysis. We have excellent engagement with government agencies, the NHS and local authorities, other statutory public sector and regulatory bodies, and third sector organisations.

Our research spans seven main themes:

• global HTA
• economic evidence alongside clinical trials
• evidence synthesis
• economic aspects of population health
• statistical analysis of linked health data
• decision analytic modeling and simulation
• incorporating qualitative evidence into health economic and health technology studies.