Apologies for any cross-posting.
The College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham offers a number of individual modules as short courses for professionals.
The following two modules from our Public Health (Health Technology Assessment) Masters course may be of interest to you or your colleagues:
Principles and Practice of Health Technology Assessment - This module will introduce the principles and practices of health technology assessment (HTA) and evidence-based medicine (EBM). It will:
- Give participants an understanding of the notions of scarcity, resource allocation and rationing in healthcare systems
- Discuss the definition, development and regulation of healthcare technologies
- Explore critically the development of HTA and EBM in UK and internationally; and the current role of HTA in local, national and international healthcare policy making
- Consider the different perspectives of the role of HTA in decision making, including those of the patient, the technology industries, healthcare decision makers/commissioners
- Describe the defining characteristics of systematic reviews
- Teach participants to critically appraise evidence through the recognition of the strengths and limitations of healthcare research and provide an understanding of the principles of economic evaluation.
This module is taught over two consecutive weeks of teaching on 24 - 28 October 2011 and 31 October – 4November 2011.
Further details:
Methodological Basis of Health Technology Assessment - The aim of this module is to equip students with all the practical skills needed to undertake a systematic review on a topic related to healthcare. By the end of the module participants should be able to:
- Define a systematic review question and develop criteria for study selection
- Plan and undertake a comprehensive search for relevant evidence relating to a specific healthcare research question
- Recognise the strengths and limitations of different types of healthcare evidence and be able to interpret study findings in the context of the quality of that study
- understand the methodological issues and potential biases associated with systematic reviews of different study designs including randomised controlled trials, observational studies, diagnostic test accuracy studies and qualitative research
- Understand how to undertake a meta-analysis of a group of clinical trials and related analyses such as indirect and mixed treatment comparisons
- Use STATA® and Review Manager (RevMan) software for meta-analysis
- Prepare a protocol for a systematic review/health technology assessment
This module is taught in two blocks each of one week duration on 14 - 18 November 2011 and 16 - 20 January 2012. During the course participants are encouraged to discuss and share issues about any review they are undertaking or wish to undertake.
Further details:
On both courses the intellectual stimuli and challenges are consistent with those required for a master’s degree course and provide students with a number of valuable transferable skills, which aim to change the way they think about medical evidence.
Teaching is deliver through a series of lectures, workshops and practical exercises by a multi-disciplinary team of subject experts internal and external to the Univiersity of Birmingham. The teaching and learning will draw upon their extensive experience and the use real life HTA/systematic review examples.
Each two week course costs £880 for home/EU students or £1740 for International students. Prices do not include accommodation, but assistance with arrangements is possible.