Health Economics
The health economics team at
the CTC is working to help incorporate measures of
benefit, harm and cost into clinical studies, and to estimate
the indirect costs of chronic illness.
Cost-effectiveness studies
The team is working closely with clinicians in fields
including oncology, neonatal care and cardiovascular
disease to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of medical
interventions from a societal perspective. In one such study, a
Markov model has been developed to assess the long-term
cost-effectiveness of the sentinel node biopsy procedure in women
with early breast cancer.
Contacts: Professor Deborah Schofield,
Hannah Verry
The economic burden of
illness
In partnership with NATSEM
(University of Canberra) we have developed Australia's
first microsimulation model of health and its associated
impacts on labour force participation, personal income, and
government revenue and
expenditure, Health&WealthMOD. The model was used
to estimate the impacts of chronic illness for individuals, in
terms of lost income and wealth, and for governments, in terms of
lost tax revenue and increased social security payments. This
research showed that preventing common chronic diseases
(such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental
illnesses) to increase workforce participation would help many
people to self-finance the costs of retirement and ageing.
A microsimulation model is also being developed to project
the long-term economic impacts of chronic illness leading to early
retirement up to 2030, and to estimate the potential long-term
economic gains of reducing the incidence of chronic illness in
the working age population. Our partners in this project are
NATSEM and the University of Queensland.
This work is funded by the Australian Research Council and
Pfizer Australia.
Contacts: Professor Deborah Schofield,
Dr Rupendra Shrestha, Emily Callander
Contact us
for more information on Health Economics.
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