******Apologies for cross-posting********
MRC PhD studentship
Centre for Health Economics (CHE)
The Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York is offering
a (3+1 years) Medical Research Council funded Capacity-building studentship
to undertake an MSc and a PhD to start in the 2008/9 academic year. The
project will focus on methodological issues relating to the analysis of
individual and aggregate patient-level cost-effectiveness data to inform
resources allocation decisions in healthcare. A brief outline of the
project is given below.
The studentship will be under the supervision of Dr Andrea Manca (Senior
Research Fellow in Health Economics, Centre for Health Economics, University
of York) and Dr Alex Sutton (Reader in Medical Statistics, Centre for
Biostatistics and Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Health Sciences,
University of Leicester).
For informal enquiries and further details please contact Dr Andrea Manca
([log in to unmask]).
The successful applicant should have a strong quantitative (e.g.
mathematics, statistics, operational research, econometrics) background and
an interest in developing statistical methodology in the area of healthcare
cost effectiveness analysis. Some knowledge of economics is desirable but
not essential.
Candidates must be eligible for UK/EU fee status (EU students MUST have been
in the UK for at least three years prior to commencement of studentship, or
being ‘migrant workers’ at the time of application).
The studentship will cover full fees for UK/EU students, a research training
support grant and conference allowance and a maintenance stipend
(approximately £14,600 per year). Applicants should send a statement of
interest (no more than 1 page) and a CV with the names and contact details
of two academic referees to Dr Andrea Manca ([log in to unmask]) by Wednesday
23rd April 2008.
PROJECT OUTLINE
Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is increasingly used as a technical tool
to inform the assessment of whether health technologies are ‘value for
money’. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is
an example of an agency which requires consideration of clinical and cost
effectiveness evidence as the basis for issuing recommendations regarding
the use of specific health technologies in the National Healthcare System
(NHS) for England and Wales.
Healthcare CEA has been traditionally conducted adopting two different
methodological approaches. The first involves the use of individual patient
level data (IPD) collected alongside randomised controlled trials (RCTs).
The second approach uses decision analytic modelling (DAM). The latter is a
framework within which evidence, typically available in the form of
aggregate level data (ALD) - e.g. number of events, individuals at risk,
contacts with healthcare providers - is combined and arranged to address a
clearly specified decision problem. While both DAM and RCT-based CEA are
extensively used in applied research, it has recently been argued that RCTs
may be neither sufficient nor the most efficient vehicle to produce
information that can directly feed into the decision making process in
healthcare.
The proposed project will involve an exploration of a set of methodological
issues relating to the analysis of individual and aggregate patient level
data for CEA. The research questions addressed by the PhD will depend on
both the student research interests and the status of the literature at the
time of the start of the PhD, but it is expected that they will include one
or more of the following themes:
1. the statistical analysis of individual patient-level data from a single
trial to generate parameters needed to populate decision-analytic cost
effectiveness models;
2. the development of statistical modelling methods using cost-effectiveness
data derived from one country to inform decisions in another, where the
latter did not participate in the original clinical trial;
3. the development of statistical methods to accommodate the simultaneous
analysis of individual patient and aggregate level data for CEA purposes.
THE SUPERVISORS
This project offers a unique opportunity to develop cutting edge statistical
methods for economic evaluation applied to health policy decisions, while
working in close contact with researchers in two very successful research
groups in the UK. While being based at CHE in York, working under the main
supervision of Dr Andrea Manca, a health economist, the successful applicant
will have expert statistical from Dr Alex Sutton (2nd supervisor), a medical
statistician based in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of
Leicester.
Further details about the research environment, the supervisors and the
grant conditions can be found at
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/JP683/MRC_PhD_studentship/
or
http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/che/index.htm
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