Mathematical Approaches in Economic Evaluations: Applying techniques from different disciplines

Health economics (HE) is a multi-disciplinary field with links to economics, psychology and medicine. This is especially apparent in economic evaluations (EE) which have become an integral part in the management of health care systems in many western countries. In economic evaluations, information on a disease, on the cost of a treatment and on the effectiveness of the treatment is combined into a single mathematical model. This model is then used to assess the cost effectiveness of a treatment for the disease. The mathematical techniques employed to obtain and describe the information originate from three distinct mathematical disciplines associated with economics, psychology and medicine: econometrics, psychometrics and (bio)statistics. Even though there is a large amount of overlap, they all originated as separate disciplines and were developed with different perspectives in mind. This means that researchers in HE have a wide variety of different statistical and mathematical techniques at their disposal. This dissertation shows how ideas and approaches from different disciplines can be applied in solving health economic problems. Basic statistical techniques common to all fields, such as linear regression, are common. They are applied in most of the studies presented in this thesis. In addition to this, the studies described in this thesis show how more specialised techniques and approaches can be used outside the field where they were originally developed. In particular they are used in economic evaluations and the measurement and valuation of health related quality of life.

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