Speaker
Description
Health economic analyses are a key stage in implementing new technologies and policies in health care, supporting healthcare providers in making effective use of limited resources. While health economists and mathematical biologists both take quantitative approaches to problems in human health, health economic models typically do not take advantage of the full range of methods accessible to mathematical biologists. This leaves health economic modelling as a site where mathematical biologists can make important contributions, with health economists representing a large potential user base for mathematical models. In this talk I will introduce the basics of health economic modelling with an emphasis on the role mathematical biologists can take as part of an interdisciplinary health economics team, and the challenges that can arise due to different conceptions of modelling within the two fields. I will also suggest ways for mathematical biologists to make their research more accessible to health economists and thus more likely to be applied in health economic analyses, where we often see modular combinations of multiple models from distinct sources. Throughout the talk I will reflect on my own experiences as a mathematical biologist working within a health economics department and contributing to health economic analyses, with particular focus on an ongoing health economic study of HPV self-sampling in cervical cancer prevention.
