The course will introduce students to Early Health Technology Assessment (HTA) which uses the tools of HTA to assist developers of health technologies in the design and placement of their technologies. It is also used by decision makers in health to estimate a technology's impact on health and costs. Decision analytic modelling is a method in HTA which is widely used. This course will teach students to develop decision models in the context of early HTA.

This course is made up of lectures and practical classes in semester 2.

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Practical exercise: Develop and evaluate a decision-analytic model. 60% weighting, ILO2.

Oral presentation and Q&A: Critical appraisal of an early HTA case study, with reference to an HTA later in the lifecycle, with a focus on the key differences and similarities in approach. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A which will count towards the overall mark. 40% weighting, ILO1,3,4. 

The aim of this course is to introduce students to core material in the area of early health technology assessment (HTA). This will include the rationale for conducting early HTA, its features and a range of commonly used methods. The course also teaches practical skills involved in developing a decision-analytic model.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Critically compare how early HTA differs from HTA undertaken later in a technology lifecycle

2. Design and build decision trees and Markov models including probabilistic sensitivity analysis and value of information analysis

3. Critically appraise methods of stakeholder engagement in terms of their appropriateness to the resources available

4. Critically evaluate the quality of early economic evaluations