HEALTH ECONOMICS COLLABORATIVE

The Health Economics Collaborative (HEC) is a joint initiative of SA Health, the University of Adelaide, the University of South Australia and Flinders University.

The HEC aims to build a decision and policy making culture within SA Health and partner agencies consistent with principles of health economics and to foster and strengthen the health economics capacity in South Australia.

To this end, SA Health provides financial assistance to the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia to support the employment of health economics academics. In addition, SA Health contributes to specific research and consulting projects aligned with its needs.

The HEC addresses a significant discipline gap in South Australia and aims to develop a sustainable, multi-strategy program in health economics over the next five years. Through this program, the health economics capacity will be built across the health sector.

The collaborative also aims to facilitate sharing of research issues and problems and to provide a forum for research collaboration and support. The HEC provides direct access for researchers to relevant policy makers within SA Health and across various State Government agencies to speed the process by which research can be implemented in health decision-making.

Professor Leonie Segal, Associate Professor Jon Karnon and Associate Professor Simon Eckermann have presented an introductory series of policy and practice relevant health economics seminars. They also work on joint research projects with the health sector and other areas of government.

See the biographies of these researchers below.

PROFESSOR LEONIE SEGAL

Professor Segal joined the University of South Australia (UniSA) in 2007 as the Foundation Research Chair in Health Economics and Policy, after eight years as Deputy Director at Monash University’s Centre for Health Economics. Her mandate is to build health economics capacity at the University of SA and within the State.

The research strengths of the UniSA Health Economics Group are in health system reform, priority setting and economic evaluation of complex interventions.

Two important research projects within the Group are ARC Linkage funded grants; one to develop an evidence-based model to determine the optimal health care workforce, and another to work with Government to develop a cross-portfolio and cost-effective strategy to prevent child abuse and ameliorate harms.

In the past decade, Leonie and her research team have conducted over 100 economic evaluations of health care interventions, together with research and papers on health system policy reform.

Leonie’s focus on the translation of research into policy and practice is supported in part by her membership in key policy committees, including the Minister’s Preventative Health Task Force and the Australian Medical Council Policy Subcommittee. She has five current ARC/NHMRC grants and contracts with State and Federal government agencies.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JON KARNON

Professor Karnon’s principal focus is on the use of decision modeling techniques as a framework for the economic evaluation of health care technologies.

As well as publishing a wide range of applied modeling studies, Jon has compared the costs and benefits of alternative modeling techniques, leading to recommendations around the circumstances in which the alternatives should be applied. He also led a review of modeling methodologies for evaluating screening programmes that resulted in three subsequent applied screening evaluations. In addition, he has developed modeling methods for evaluating patient safety technologies.

Jon is currently developing a new framework for modeling the combined analysis of health service delivery, patient choice, equity and efficiency. The cost-effectiveness of a technology (or intervention) is assessed in the context of the physical resources (relevant health professionals, clinic space, hospital beds, etc.) and financial resources available to provide interventions and the cost-effectiveness of competing demands for both broad forms of resource. This work will inform the efficient and equitable organisation and delivery of health care services.

Jon is also interested in researching disinvestment of non-cost-effective technologies, and is leading a SA-based project using data linkage to identify best practice in the public hospital sector. He is also an associate investigator on an NHMRC project grant focusing on the process of disinvestment.

Jon is also interested in obesity and prevention, where he has led some survey work aiming to understand consumers’ decision-making process with respect to soft drinks.  He is developing a population-based obesity decision model as part of a primary study looking at management of chronic conditions in primary care.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SIMON ECKERMANN

Profesor Eckermann is an internationally recognised health economist and mathematician, with extensive experience in original and applied research and teaching.

Simon is currently Professor in Health Economics at Flinders University Centre for Clinical Change and Health Care Research (http://clinicalchange.flinders.edu.au).

From 2000-2005 he was Senior Health Economist at the NHMRC Clinical Trial Centre at Sydney University, where he was responsible for health economic studies in cardiovascular and cancer trials. These studies included LIPID, FIELD and IBIS, as well as health economic components of systematic reviews for the Medical Service Advisory Committee.

He developed and taught Master of Public Health (MPH) courses in decision analysis at Sydney University. Since November 2005 he has been a chief investigator on eight successful NHMRC, ARC and other Commonwealth grants totaling more than $12 million.

He has undertaken health economic research components of clinical trials (COPD, sleep medicine, palliative and transition care) and decision analyses (Barretts Oesophegous).

Simon and Andrew Willan have led internationally recognised original research programs in health economic methods for efficient research design and prioritization; comparison of strategies in health technology assessment (HTA), including quality in efficiency measurement and funding of providers in practice.

Simon’s original research provides a systematic and unified framework to enable robust, evidence-based decision-making across research, reimbursement and practice consistent with maximising net benefit.

His contributions have been widely disseminated via publications in leading international journals, invited presentations and key note addresses at major international conferences.

Simon is active on the Economic Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefit Advisory Committee (PBAC) and the National Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) Scientific Committee.

With Andrew Willan, Simon runs an internationally recognised three-day short course in methods for evidence-based health technology assessment, decision making and practice: “Health Economics From Theory to Practice: informing related decisions for research, reimbursement and regulation”.

Since 2005 more than 150 participants from policy, epidemiological, clinical, statistics and health economic backgrounds have undertaken this course. In 2009 the course is being run at Oxford University with the Oxford Health Economics Research Centre (HERC) and the UK office of Health Economics (OHE).