Research Design Service (RDS)
HEU-based health economists provide expertise and advice on the design of economic evaluations as part of their involvement in NIHR Research Design Service West Midlands (RDS WM). RDS WM is one of ten regional Research Design Services established to support health and social care researchers in developing research proposals for submission to national funding programmes.
Through RDS West Midlands, we provide advice on economic components of research proposals submitted to national funding competitions for applied health care research.
HEU members support and promote the use of economic tools in applied health care research as part of their involvement with RDS West Midlands.
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Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM)
The ITM is being delivered by Birmingham Health Partners (BHP), a collaboration which brings together clinical, scientific and academic excellence of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust (BHP), the University of Birmingham (UoB) and Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS foundation trust (BCH).
HEU members are actively involved in supporting the work of the ITM.
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HEU collaboration with Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele University
HEU have a highly successful formal collaboration with the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele University, to provide health economics support for their world-leading portfolio of musculoskeletal research. The collaboration, overseen by Dr Sue Jowett, funds two full time research fellows (Raymond Oppong and Jesse Kigozi) to design and undertake applied and methodological health economics research alongside clinical trials and cohort studies.
Examples of the applied work include economic evaluations alongside clinical trials of exercise for knee pain, primary care management of osteoarthritis, treatment of shoulder pain and stratified care for musculoskeletal disorders. Ongoing methodological work has focused on methods for analysing different trial designs (e.g. factorial and cluster trials), measurement and valuation of productivity costs, the use of decision modelling in osteoarthritis and validity of alternative outcome measures such as the ICECAP-O capability tool. Furthermore, the collaboration has led to two successfully completed PhDs with further PhDs in the pipeline, and several potential MSc dissertation topics are provided every year.
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