Background: Over four millions people in England are estimated to have a CVD and they are responsible for over one third of deaths and a fifth of hospital admissions in England every year. In prioritising the reduction of premature mortality there has been a focus on improving prevention and...

Background: Levels of measles in England and Wales are at their highest for 18 years and strategies targeting the different groups of parents who don’t vaccinate their children continue to be needed. Decision aids for childhood immunisation decisions appear to be effective in achieving vaccine...

The challenge of implementing high cost innovative technologies in health care systems operating under significant budgetary pressure has seen a radical shift in the health technology reimbursement landscape. New reimbursement strategies attempt to reduce the risk of making the wrong decision;...

Background - There are now a variety of preference based health related quality of life measures available. These instruments describe health in different terms and also use different methods for measuring individual preferences for health. Whilst these instruments have been shown to have...

The Expected Value of Information Framework has been proposed as a method for identifying when health care technologies should be reimbursed and when reimbursement should be withheld awaiting more evidence. The standard framework assesses the value of having additional evidence available to...

The ‘Want2Work’ programme was designed to help individuals back into work. This article uses propensity score matching to evaluate the success of a policy that cannot otherwise be evaluated using standard parametric techniques. Using a range of estimation methods, sub-samples and types of...

Harris has been a vocal critic of CEA and the QALY for over 20 years. In this paper we attempt to summarise and evaluate both Harris’ criticisms of CEA and the alternative procedures he commends to health care decision makers. Harris’ basic position is that all health benefits are...

Valuation studies have favoured standard gamble (SG) and time trade off techniques (TTO) over visual analogue scales (VAS). The lack of observable trade off properties of VAS precludes preferences being measured on a cardinal scale. The inferences, and indeed the premise, of many perceived VAS...

Background: Patient Reported Outcome Measures are an important component of the evidence for health technology appraisal. Their incorporation into cost effectiveness analyses (CEA) requires conversion of descriptive information into utilities. This can be done using bespoke utility algorithms....

The increasingly explicit use of health technology assessment continues to generate substantial public and academic policy debates. The debates are about puzzling issues whose correct resolution is not immediately obvious and the very explicitness of HTA’s use pinpoints the issues and locates...