Health Economics from Theory to Practice Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives

This book provides a robust set of health economic principles and methods to inform societal decisions in relation to research, reimbursement and regulation (pricing and monitoring of performance in practice). We provide a theoretical and practical framework that navigates to avoid common biases and suboptimal outcomes observed in recent and current practice of health economic analysis, as opposed to claiming to be comprehensive in covering all methods. Our aim is to facilitate efficient health system decision making processes in research, reimbursement and regulation, which promote constrained optimisation of community outcomes from a societal perspective given resource constraints, available technology and processes of technology assessment. Importantly, this includes identifying an efficient process to maximize the potential that arises from research and pricing in relation to existing technology under uncertainty, given current evidence and associated opportunity costs of investment. Principles and methods are identified and illustrated across health promotion, prevention and palliative care settings as well as treatment settings. Health policy implications are also highlighted.

Simon Eckermann is Senior Professor of Health Economics at the Australian Health Services Research Institute and University of Wollongong. His research interests include robust methods for cost effectiveness evidence synthesis and translation, multiple strategy and efficiency comparisons allowing for quality of care consistent with maximising net benefit, multiplier methods in health promotion settings, multiple domain comparisons in palliative care settings and value of information methods for optimally informing joint research, reimbursement, implementation and pricing decisions.

In the last 15 years Prof. Eckermann has published more than 60 related health economics papers in high impact international health economics, policy and medical journals and taught associated principles and methods to more than 500 students from a wide range of clinical, research, policy and health technology assessment backgrounds, primarily in the Health Economics from Theory to Practice course developed with Professor Andrew Willan. He also actively sits on and undertakes guideline revision and health economics educational activities for bodies including the PBAC Economic Sub-Committee, Palliative Care Trials Scientific Committee, Prostheses List Advisory Committee, Victorian Cancer Agency and Food Standards ANZ and is a CI on competitive research grants totalling more than a $25 million over the past decade.