Health Economics Alongside Trials Special Interest Group

The Health Economics Alongside Trials Special Interest Group is Co-Chaired by Prof Rachael Morton, Director of health economics and health technology assessment at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, and A/Prof Richard Norman, Health Economist at Curtin University

Mission

The group seeks to facilitate better collaboration between trialists and health economists, ensure growth of workforce capacity in health economics, and to improve clinical trial design and translation through enhanced health economics input into their planning and design.

Our purpose

The Group will provide a forum for health economists to share knowledge and expertise, identify issues, exchange information and engage in collaborative problem solving.

The Group’s functions will be to:

• Support decision making for trials prioritisation using VOI analysis and similar approaches (headroom analysis)
• Connect stakeholders with health economists who possess specific experience in applied or methodological areas for the purpose of collaboration.
• Establish and disseminate best practice and novel methods for economic evaluation alongside clinical trials and economic models using trial data.
• Identify best practice models of collaboration taking into account roles and responsibility, budgets and publication and dissemination practices.
• Highlight how economic evidence can impact practice change and policy decisions.
• Contribute to the community of practice, capacity building and training space of economic evaluation alongside trials.
• Provide advocacy around research infrastructure support of particular importance to Health Economists, such as expedited access to administrative data.

Our activities

The activities of the HEAT SIG focus on targeted integration of health economic analyses in late phase trials and improved awareness of methods used to conduct health economic analyses of trials. This is being achieved through:

1. Development of a Find a Health Economist (FAHE) Platform. ACTA is currently developing this public facility on the ACTA website to connect trialists and health economists with other health economists for purposes of collaboration. Because health economic input is vital into all aspects of trial design, the FAHE facility will act as a platform for engagement and interaction within the sector. The FAHE facility has successfully been launched, and is accessible via the following link.
2. Presentations on Methodological Topics of economic evaluation alongside trials.
    Throughout the course of the grant, the HEAT SIG will continue to act as a forum for high level discussion. To continue to work towards building capacity in health economics, the Group will look to hold presentations and webinars on various methodological topics, including consideration of both national and international speakers. You may access our previous presentations below
   - Use of Administrative Data for Measuring Events and Healthcare Use