Introduction 1. In recent years considerable efforts have been made to increase the evidence base for decision making within the NHS. Under the NHS R&D Programme a sizeable percentage of NHS resources have been spent on research, one of the largest programmes of research being in the field of...

Rationale Increasing attention is being given to the evaluation of public health interventions. Methods for the economic evaluation of clinical interventions are well established. In contrast, the economic evaluation of public health interventions raises additional methodological challenges. The...

Integrated care is often perceived as a solution for some of the major challenges faced by health and social care systems. In these systems, 20% of the population accounts for 80% of the expenditure on care [1]. These ‘high users’ are typically people with one or more long-term...

Age related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the United Kingdom and the rest of the western world. It occurs in 15% to 30% of individuals over 75 years of age. About 15% of these patients develop a more aggressive wet form of the disease that causes severe loss of...

The randomised controlled trial (RCT) has developed a central role in applied cost-effectiveness studies in health care as the vehicle for analysis. This paper considers the role of trial-based economic evaluation in this era of explicit decision making. It is argued that any framework for...

This handbook is intended to inform policy makers at various levels of decision making in health care about the technique of economic appraisal and to help them appreciate the potential roles of economic appraisal in health policy. In this context “policy makers” may be broadly defined:...

The Department of Health has recently published a register of economic evaluations of health care treatments and programmes. The objective of the register is to assist health care decision makers in assessing the value for money from alternative ways of allocation scarce resources. If the...