SHQM48 Health Technology Assignment Swansea University

Assignment Support

1. Please read the Assignment Guidance on Canvas and have a look at the example.
2. All the group work we have done so far was designed to help you think from a health economic point of view.
3. The critical appraisal task should have helped you to understand what to look for when you use health economic evidence to inform decision making.

Assignment outline review

• You have the option to e-mail Berni your provisional assignment plan or outline
• I will provide feedback within 3 office working days. Please note I may not always be in the office.
• I cannot look at any assignment outlines in the last 7 days before assignment is due to be submitted.

Assignment Overview

STEP 1:

Choose a health technology (service, intervention or medication) you are interested in.

• Novel or existing health technology
• Ideally with some clinical and cost-effectiveness evidence published (UK or international)

STEP 2:

Imagine you are a decision maker (e.g. the manager of a regional service). 

• You want to implement a new health technology.
• Or you need to make sure an existing service is good value for money in order to justify its continued existence.

STEP 3:

What is your evaluation question?

• What is the decision problem?  
• Summarise the key issues you would want to understand in deciding whether it is worth investing or disinvesting in the new/existing health technology.

STEP 4:

What is the decision problem?  

• Define the population, intervention, comparator and outcome (PICO) that would be important to understand in setting out reviewing the current evidence.

STEP 5:

How can clinical and health economic evidence help to make this decision?

• What key principles of health economics apply to the decision problem?
• What are the most important patient outcomes for this decision problem?
• What evidence exists and which evidence is the highest quality, most relevant?