The Advanced Handbook of Methods in Evidence Based Healthcare

′This handbook is an excellent reflection of the growing maturity and methodological sophistication of the field of Health Technology Assessment. The Handbook covers a spectrum of issues, from primary evidence (clinical trials) through reviews and meta-analysis, to identifying and filling gaps in the evidence. Up-to-date, clearly written, and well-edited, the handbook is a needed addition to any personal or professional library dealing with Health Technology Assessment.′

Professor David Banta, TNO Prevention and Health, The Netherlands

′This text presents the most advanced knowledge on methodology in health care research, and will form the backbone of many future studies′ - Paula Roberts, Nurse Researcher

The `effectiveness revolution′ both in research and clinical practice, has tested available methods for health services research to the extreme. How far can observational methods, routine data and qualitative methods be used in health care evaluation? What cost and outcome measures are appropriate, and how should data be gathered?

With the support of over two million pounds from the British Health Technology Assessment Research Programme, the research project for this Handbook has led to both a synthesis of all of the existing knowledge in these areas and an agenda for future debate and research.

The chapters and their authors have been selected through a careful process of peer review and provide a coherent and complete approach to the field. The handbook has been a unique collaboration between internationally regarded clinicians, statisticians, epidemiologists, social scientists, health economists and ethicists. It provides the most advanced thinking and the most authoritative resource for a state of the art review of methods of evaluating health care and will be required reading for anyone involved in health services research and management.

Andrew Stevens is Professor of Public Health and former Head of Department and Division (of Primary Care, Public and Occupational Health). Andrew is interested in Health Services Research including health care needs assessment, health technology assessment and horizon scanning. He has edited the 4 volume Health Care Needs Assessment Series, and the Advanced Handbook of Methods in Evidence Based Healthcare. Andrew has had a close involvement with the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) since its establishment in 2000, and has been Chairman of one of its Appraisal Committees for 6 years.

Porf. Adrams′ research includes: The development and application of Bayesian methods in healthcare evaluation, systematic reviews and meta-analysis and The joint modelling of longitudinal and time-to-event data. He has considerable experience of undertaking pradmatic TCT′s and systematic reviews in a variety of settings, including cardiology, gastroenology, oncology and reproductive medicine.

John Brazier is Professor of Health Economics at the Health Economics and Decision Science section of the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield. He has more than 20 years’ experience of conducting economic evaluations of health care interventions for policy makers. He has also undertaken numerous economic evaluations alongside clinical trials and decision analytic models. He has a particular interest in the measurement and valuation of health for economic evaluation where he has published widely. He is perhaps best known for his work in developing a preference-based measure of health for the SF-36, but more recently has extended these methods to a number of specific condition including measures in asthma, cancer, overactive bladder, dementia and epilepsy. More recently he has been developing ways to incorporate equity concerns such as burden of disease into the weights applied to QALYs for Value Based Pricing. He is Director of an Economic Evaluation Policy Research Unit (EEPRU) that is funded by the Department of Health in England. He was a member of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Technology Appraisal Committee from 2000-2004 and is a member of the Working Group on revising Methods of Economic Evaluation for Technology Appraisal in 2012.