Health Economics

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: Students will understand the economic theory of health and healthcare, including models of demand and supply of health and health care, demand for insurance, health and healthcare policy. The emphasis will be on key economic concepts that health economists use to analyse health and healthcare markets. The students will also learn to interpret empirical findings in health economics and health policy.

Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will be able to describe, both theoretically and through empirical evidence, the determinants of health, health disparities, unhealthy behaviours and health insurance. They will also be able to apply key concept of economics to issues in health policy.

Making judgement: students will have the capacity for independent judgement on issues related to health and healthcare and to the evaluation of health policy programmes.

Communication skills: They will have the ability to present convincingly the empirical evidence and the economic theory to support a point of view or policy recommendation.

Learning skills: students will be able to apply descriptive statistical analysis and economic reasoning to other topics in economics and economic policy.

Educational objectives

• know the basic types of healthcare systems in the world, with their main strengths and weaknesses; the methods used to evaluate the efficacy, the effectiveness and the efficiency of healthcare interventions;
• know the classification of disease risk factors and levels of prevention and intervention; know the different epidemiological study designs and the main disease occurrence measures;
• be able to understand and read critically health programs in the light of the principles of equity, effectiveness and efficiency and of international policies and healthcare organization planning objectives; to develop a critical thinking in terms of global health, taking into account that many health problems spill over national boundaries;
• be able to use quantitative tools to describe the distribution of diseases and determinants of disease in the population; be able to read critically and use published epidemiological studies.

Educational objectives

The Statistics for Health Economics course aims to provide the main statistical techniques used in the health economics with particular attention to the inferential methodologies of cost-effectiveness analysis of health treatments and the construction of statistical and probabilistic models for health economic evaluations. During the lectures, the topics of probabilities and inference necessary for the development of the course will be recalled. The methods for estimating the average costs and effectiveness and the indicators through which costs and effectiveness must be compared will be considered. In addition, Bayesian inference techniques will be introduced. By Bayesian methods we will take account of the various sources of information necessary to make decisions in health-economics. During the lab sessions, the R software will be used with the aim of carrying out practical examples of cost effectiveness analysis based on real data.

1) Knowledge and understanding. Upon completion of the course the student will know the specific statistical-methodological aspects of the costs-effectiveness analysis of health treatments both from a theoretical and practical point of view. The student will also be familiar with Bayesian inference techniques. These techniques will give the student a better understanding of the statistical-probabilistic tools that can be generally used in for model estimation in health-economics.
2) Applying knowledge and understanding. Through the theoretical and practical planning of cost-effectiveness analyzes with real data, the student will be able to integrate the statistical-mathematical aspects typical of a cost-effectiveness analysis with the specific information coming from the different clinical-health contexts in which such analyzes are requested.
3) Making judgements. Through the implementation by the software R of cost-effectiveness analyses with real data, the students who complete the course will be able to make decisions under uncertainty regarding the comparison of different treatment programs. Through the correct evaluation of both the uncertainty and the sensitivity of the statistical conclusions, the students will also be able to independently assess the actual validity of their conclusions.
4) Communication skills. Through the writing of short papers, at the end of the course, students will be able to illustrate the results of a cost-effectiveness analysis both to non-specialist interlocutors and to expert researchers. They will also be able to communicate these results so that decision makers can understand the ethical and social implications inherent in the comparison between different health treatments
5) Learning skills. Through the knowledge of specific packages distributed within the R software and through the knowledge of the R software itself, students will finally be able to independently conduct statistical analysis with complex data for the various health economics issues for both professional and research purposes

Educational objectives

The course aims to teach the basics of the use of Stata statistical software, with particular attention to the management of microdata datasets for the analysis of the main phenomena related to health economics.
At the end of the course students will be able to import data into Stata starting from different formats (.txt, .csv, .dta, etc.) and in different ways, to sort and prepare the data for subsequent statistical processing and to independently perform descriptive and inferential statistics.

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: students will be able to understand the different health econometrics approaches, to identify in what contexts each method applies, how the results from health econometric analyses may be used to inform health policy and health care decision-making.
Applying knowledge and understanding: students will be able to apply econometric methods related to the estimation of treatment models on modern econometric software.
Making judgement: students will be able to critically evaluate strengths and weaknesses of health econometric analyses as a research and health policy tool.
Communication skills: students will be able to effectively communicate the results of their own analysis in simple and effective ways.
Learning skills: students will develop the necessary skills and abilities to independently identify and formulate empirical research questions to conduct a health econometric analysis.

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: in recent decades the Italian Health System has dealt with legislative, economic, social, demographic and epidemiological changes. Therefore, managers of companies operating in the pharmaceutical and health sector need specific and qualified managerial knowledge. In this context, the course aims to provide students with the fundamental tools and concepts to manage private and public companies operating in the healthcare sector.
Applying knowledge and understanding: the course explores the essential concepts and tools of accounting, finance and strategic management, with the aim of offering a detailed understanding of the structure and functions of healthcare delivery organizations and the key management knowledge and competencies required for excellent organizational performance.
Making judgement: students will develop an autonomous judgment capability on a theoretical and practical perspective.
Communication skills: students will develop the attitude to reasoning and the ability to argue around the topics of economics and health management.
Learning skills: at the end of the course students will have basic knowledge and skills to successfully operate within public and private health organizations

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: Students will understand the economic theory of health and healthcare, including models of demand and supply of health and health care, demand for insurance, health and healthcare policy. The emphasis will be on key economic concepts that health economists use to analyse health and healthcare markets. The students will also learn to interpret empirical findings in health economics and health policy.

Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will be able to describe, both theoretically and through empirical evidence, the determinants of health, health disparities, unhealthy behaviours and health insurance. They will also be able to apply key concept of economics to issues in health policy.

Making judgement: students will have the capacity for independent judgement on issues related to health and healthcare and to the evaluation of health policy programmes.

Communication skills: They will have the ability to present convincingly the empirical evidence and the economic theory to support a point of view or policy recommendation.

Learning skills: students will be able to apply descriptive statistical analysis and economic reasoning to other topics in economics and economic policy.

Educational objectives

Knowledge and ability to understand
The course aims to provide students with the knowledge and understanding of the role of public intervention in the supply and regulation of health goods and services, as well as the regulation of the pharmaceutical market, allowing them to develop original ideas also for the purposes of a research activity, including through the study of the recommended material. The course aims to provide a solid knowledge of the analysis schemes of legal regulatory choices in the health sector and in the pharmaceutical market. The traditional exams at the end of the course will allow to verify the acquisition of this knowledge and understanding skills.

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
The course aims to give students the ability to apply the skills acquired by offering innovative solutions in solving legal and regulatory issues in the health and pharmaceutical sector, using their skills in the evaluation of different regulatory approaches. Students will acquire the ability to apply the knowledge learned during the course through the interaction with the teacher and the development of case studies in the classroom, having verified the achievement of this training objective through final exams.

Autonomy of judgment
The course aims to provide students with the ability to collect and interpret legislative and regulatory data in order to produce analysis, to indicate decisions useful for corporate compliance in the health and pharmaceutical sectors, showing autonomy of judgment. The evaluation of the student’s ability to express judgments in an autonomous way is carried out through the drafting of personal papers in case studies.

Communication skills
The course aims to provide students with the ability to communicate to specialist and non-specialist interlocutors their legal and regulatory knowledge, conclusions and indications of compliance to which they have arrived in the examination of the problems within their competence and the arguments which led them to these conclusions, including through guided discussions on case studies. The overall assessment of the skills achieved is foreseen in the final exam.

Learning ability
The course aims to provide students with the learning skills that allow them to pursue higher level studies (research doctorate, graduate schools and/or second level university master’s degree), acquired with traditional teaching tools and with the examination of case studies. In any case, the final exams will allow verification of the acquisition of this capacity for continuous learning.

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: Students will learn the role of the health and public health sector in the economic development of countries; they will be able to understand the relevance of health in the process of accumulation of human capital and therefore in the process of economic and social growth; They also will be able to understand the role of the health sector in a globalized world where the international circulation of goods, services and people is at the same time a challenge and an opportunity for the populations. In the applied part of the course, student will be learning and get acquainted with the available data sources; learn how to master micro- and macro-level data; get familiar with the software Stata;

Knowledge and comprehension Skills applied: Students will be able to use the logical and analytical methods to understand the various theories explaining the positive and negative impact of migration on the health systems of the countries of reception and origin; The theories of growth and economic development that consider the health factor as a fundamental variable to their realization. Moreover in the second part of the course, student will be learning to:
- formulate the research question;
- choose the right methodology to affront the issue;
- write a research project on one of the topics studied during the course.

Autonomy of Judgement: The students will develop an autonomous capacity of judgement, in a theoretical and practical perspective, on the economic analysis of the "health system" and of its economic-social consequences
Communicative Skills: Students will develop the aptitude for economic reasoning and the ability to argumentation on economic and social analysis.
Ability to learn: Students will be able to address other teachings of the theoretical and quantitative economic discipline thanks to what was learned during the course

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding
Students will understand the concepts of Performance, Performance Cycle, Performance Tree and Performance indicators in healthcare organizations. Students will also understand the meaning and the appropriate use of the main methods and indicators for monitoring the health of the population and the activities of the health services, such as occurrence measures (rates, ratios, proportions, person-years), adjustment methods (direct standardization, stratification, regression models), measures of association (Odds Ratios, Relative Risks), indicators of hospital activity (length of stay, occupancy rate, bed supply, turn over index), and graphic representation (targets, dashboards, spiecharts, treemaps).
Finally, students will understand the rules of scientific writing for publication and they will understand how to allocate the portion of a written report to the appropriate section (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion)

Applying knowledge and understanding
Students will be able to describe the main methods of Performance evaluation and to know which one is more suitable to the situation presented (Input, Process, Program, Output, Impact). They will be able to search for the appropriate information to describe a specific health context and to apply the appropriate method of analysis. They will be able to reproduce a structured abstract from a scientific article and to write a short report in the structured form (definition of the objective, data collection, selection of indicators, summary and presentation of results).

Making judgement
Students will acquire the ability of independent judgement on issues related to Performance evaluation in healthcare. Through the analysis of examples taken from the literature they will be able to choose the most appropriate Performance evaluation method to compare different geographical contexts, pre-defined objectives, and different organizational levels.

Communication skills
Students will have the ability to critically discuss examples of Performance evaluation systems used in healthcare. They will have the ability to simulate a congress speach by delivering to the classroom a Power Point presentation on a short health evaluation report.

Learning skills
Students will be able to apply descriptive and analytical statistics to analyze simple dataset and to report the results following the structured form of a scientific article.
 

Educational objectives

Knowledge and understanding: students will be able to understand the theoretical background of the pharmacoeconomics evaluation techniques, in the fields of Biopharmaceutical Industry, with particular regard to cost-minimization analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis and cost-benefit analysis.
Applying knowledge and understanding: students will be able to use the modeling frameworks, the budget impact analysis and the patient reported outcomes through examples taken from national and international literature and the help of case studies, with a specific focus on data sources and accounting for uncertainty.
Making judgement: students will develop an autonomous judgment capability on a theoretical and practical perspective related to pharmacoeconomics and outcome research.
Communication skills: students will develop an attitude for pharmacoeconomic reasoning and the capacity for argumentation on the economic evaluation of biopharmaceutical innovation.
Learning skills: students will be able to deal with other subjects of the health economics field thanks to the principles and practice of pharmacoeconomics and of outcome research.