PhD Researcher Spotlight: Joanne Mair

Author: Joanne Mair Background Hello, my name is Jo and I am undertaking a part time PhD within the Usher Institute, my supervisors are Dr Nazir Lone, Dr Peter Hall and Professor Kev Dhaliwal.  I currently work for the Centre for Inflammation Research as a Clinical Project Manager within Professor Kev Dhaliwal’s team and have …

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Info-BC Launch

Author: Alistair Bullen Background In January we officially launched the Info-BC survey. The study explores patient and health professional preferences for secondary breast cancer treatments using a health economics tool called a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The launch marks the culmination of over a year of research and hard work including literature reviews, qualitative interviews …

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EHE presentation to the Scottish Government

Last week, Elizabeth was invited down to St Andrews House to present her PhD work to the Health and Social Care Analysis team. Specifically, this presentation covered her PhD research on the provision of long term care to older adults in Scotland, with a particular focus on the usefulness of Scotland’s administrative data (data that …

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Reflections from the European Palliative Care Research Centre (PRC) Seminar

Author: Katharina Diernberger The PRC is a European Research Centre consisting of 17 international and 8 national collaborating centres. They plan and conduct international multicentre studies within palliative care, focusing on pain, cachexia and health care services. On the 30th January, the TVT (Two Versus Three Step) study, primarily run by the centre in Edinburgh, …

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Early Health Economic Modelling for Diagnostic Technology Development

Using decision modelling and value of information analysis (VoI) early in the development of new technologies has proven an effective way of ensuring that innovation leads to high value interventions for NHS patients. There is an acute need to improve efficiency in the development of new genomic and precision medicine technologies. With this in mind, …

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Researcher Spotlight: Aileen Neilson

Background Aileen joined Edinburgh University’s Usher Institute and Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit (ECTU) as a Senior Health Economist in 2018.  Aileen’s current role includes leading and developing health economics research in The University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian, contributing to the development of new methods and techniques in health economics through methodology research embedded within …

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Reflections from Hannah Pae on undertaking a project in Health Economics as part of her Masters in Public Health

“For my master’s dissertation, I was beyond excited to get involved in a real-life health economics project at the Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit” Population aging is a worldwide phenomenon, projecting a rise in the number of persons aged over 60 from approximately 810 million currently, to 2 billion by 2050 (O’Brien, 2013). The observed rise …

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Final meeting of the Lothian Cancer Data Intelligence Project

Author: Holly Ennis The National Cancer Research Institute Annual Meeting in Glasgow 2019 marked an important milestone for members of the ECTU health economics group involved in the Lothian Cancer Data Intelligence Project (LCDI). It marked the end of an 18 month collaborative project to explore the completeness, data quality and scope of a comprehensive …

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INFO-BC: What We Learned From Think Aloud Pilots

Author: Alistair Bullen Background to the project and the think aloud pilots The INFO-BC (Supporting shared decision making in secondary breast cancer) project is continuing to make great progress towards releasing a full-scale survey to patients, health professionals and the general public. INFO-BC is a planned survey which aims to understand preferences for secondary breast …

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2019 European ISPOR

Author: Robert Nagy 2019 European International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes (ISPOR) As a PhD student working on a project that is on the borderline of Data Science, Medical Informatics and Health Technology Assessment, I felt it was crucial for me to attend this year’s European International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes (ISPOR) – the …

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