Is the provided treatment the best option for patients and how to demonstrate whether the health benefits of a new treatment option justify the use of limited resources, e.g. doctors, beds, time and funds?

• What is the effect of the new treatment in terms of costs, direct and indirect?
• What is the effect of the new treatment on important health outcomes, such as survival and quality of life?
• How to optimise the use of time and other resources in the best possible way?

Health economics is concerned with how society uses scarce resources to meet the demand and need for healthcare services and is essential for making informed choices and efficiently allocating resources to maximise health outcomes. This scarcity creates a need for prioritisation and hence a strong case for health economic evaluation that aims to provide decision makers with estimates of the health benefits and costs associated with different interventions.

For more background information, please visit FAQ. 

Can health economic evaluation be relevant for your research project?

• Is the intervention or method you are researching expected to impact survival or quality of life (QoL) of patients or carers?
• Are you expecting any potential differences in terms of resource use between the intervention and comparator/current practice (which may result in differences in costs)?

If your answer to any of the questions presented above is “yes”, then we recommend you to contact us for a health economics audit for your project/study. We provide free advice and support for a fee.  

Team Health Economics is part of the Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) at Oslo University Hospital, and we provide advising within the following areas:

• Design and methods within health economics - e.g. health economic evaluation (cost-effectiveness analysis etc.), estimation of long term survival and treatment effect and/or QALY, Value of Information (VOI) methods, estimation of costs of interventions and simulation modelling.
• Protocols and applications for funding where Health Economics is relevant (e.g. Helse Sør-Øst, NFR)
• Courses and presentations

Mail: HOK@ous-hf.no