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Health Economics

Theme Leader: Dr Peter Hall
Theme Manager: Dr Holly Ennis
Theme Health Economist: Dr Elizabeth Lemmon

Our health economics work stream is a core component of the UK Colorectal Cancer Intelligence Hub. We are aiming to provide leadership in the health economics of bowel cancer and the use of NHS datasets for analysing both costs and clinical pathways. The work stream is led by the University of Edinburgh. The Edinburgh team have their own health economics blog; read their welcome post to find out about the group and its members.

Theme aims

We are planning population level studies of healthcare intervention costs, and how efficient those interventions are at managing bowel cancer. The data will, for the first time, enable us to go beyond population level estimates, with the splitting of costs by specific treatment pathways or patient and provider characteristics. With linkage to the growing availability of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs), we will estimate quality adjusted life years (QALYs) from routinely collected data. Such research is essential for planning healthcare services and using resources effectively.

Our intention is to make use of new data, and the new methods developed by the Hub, to address current controversies in colorectal cancer management. One example of where we hope to have an impact, is helping the four UK bowel cancer screening programmes decide upon the optimal criteria for offering screening. Another example is informing the use of neoadjuvant versus adjuvant therapies with bowel cancer surgery.