AI is transforming healthcare, but how do we evaluate its value?

In a YHEC blog, Project Director Angel Varghese explores the challenges of evaluating AI-enabled digital health technologies, including:

• Representativeness and potential bias in training data.
• Understanding how technologies are used in real-world settings.
• Linking diagnostic outcomes to longer-term health outcomes.
• Managing uncertainty when evidence is limited.

Angel discusses how early economic modelling, scenario analysis and evidence-generation planning can help developers and decision-makers understand uncertainty, identify evidence gaps and make more informed decisions about the adoption of AI technologies.

Read the full blog. 

Supporting NICE decision-making on innovative liver transplantation technology

Liver transplantation can be life-saving for people with end-stage liver disease, but donor livers are in limited supply. That’s why new technologies that could help preserve and assess donor organs are so important.

YHEC is proud to have contributed as an External Assessment Group (EAG) to the latest NICE assessment of ex-situ machine perfusion devices to preserve deceased donor livers for transplantation, rigorously assessing the available clinical and economic evidence to support NICE’s decision-making.

Read the NICE guidance and find out more about our work with NICE. 

Can health technology assessment help make healthcare more sustainable?

YHEC Senior Research Consultant, Melissa Pegg, appeared on the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast recently. She discussed how environmental considerations could be brought into HTA, the importance of getting environmental data into decision-making, and what we can learn from a real-world case study comparing reusable and single-use endoscopes.

One particularly striking finding? The reusable endoscope had around 50% lower environmental impact, alongside a more favourable budget impact and slightly more favourable QALY outcome.

Listen to Melissa’s conversation with Frederik Dam van Deurs.

New NHS plans put sepsis in the spotlight

The NHS has set out a new Sepsis Modern Service Framework, with an ambition to reduce deaths, serious illness and long-term harm from sepsis by at least 25% by 2035. The plans include a focus on earlier recognition and treatment, including the potential role of wearable technology.

YHEC research, commissioned by the UK Sepsis Trust, has estimated that sepsis costs the UK economy £23 billion each year. The analysis highlights that the impact of sepsis extends well beyond NHS healthcare costs, including wider economic consequences.

We’re pleased that YHEC’s health economics expertise is contributing to the evidence base supporting this important work.

Read more about the framework and contact us to find out more.

Meet the Team: Jo Hanlon

In a Meet the Team blog, Jo Hanlon, Project Director at YHEC, shares her career journey and reflects on how her public health experience shapes the work she does today.

With more than two decades of experience in the NHS, Jo brings a valuable perspective to projects across cancer services, primary care, health policy and more.

She also talks about what she finds most rewarding: showing clients how health economics can support real-world decision-making and producing evidence and tools that can be applied in practice.

Read the full interview to find out more about Jo’s work and experience.

Welcome to Chloé

YHEC would like to welcome Chloé Jones, who joins us as Research Assistant.

Welcome, Chloé!

Upskill your team with YHEC training

Do you need to build health economics, HTA or evidence synthesis expertise within your team?

At YHEC, we don’t just deliver training, we work with organisations to design bespoke learning experiences tailored to their specific needs.

From health economic modelling and outcomes research, to literature reviews, statistics and emerging areas such as environmental impact assessment, our expert teams can help your organisation develop the knowledge and skills needed to make better evidence-informed decisions.

Find out more.

New webinar: how might environmental sustainability be evaluated in health economics?

Environmental sustainability is becoming an increasingly important consideration for healthcare decision-makers. But how can environmental outcomes be evaluated alongside costs and health benefits?

Join Melissa Pegg for the next session in YHEC's free Environmental Impact Webinar Series on 18 September at 1pm BST. The webinar is free to attend.

Find out more and register.

European Heart Journal Open

New research, co-authored by YHEC's Heather Davies and Lucy Hillcoat, examines the cost-effectiveness of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) for people with asymptomatic severe aortic stenosis.

Using a cost-utility model informed by the EARLY TAVR trial, the study compared early TAVI with clinical surveillance across nine European healthcare systems.

The results suggest that early TAVI could be an economically dominant strategy across all nine countries, delivering greater health benefits while reducing costs.

Read the full open-access article.

Applied Health Economics and Policy

How does maternal RSV vaccination compare with newborn nirsevimab or no RSV prophylaxis in terms of cost-effectiveness?

A new publication, co-authored by YHEC's Amy Dymond, Stuart Mealing and Charlotte Graham reports the economic model developed as part of a Swiss Health Technology Assessment.

The Markov model evaluated costs and health outcomes from a Swiss healthcare payer perspective, incorporating RSV-related hospitalisations, emergency department and primary care visits, and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

The paper is open access and includes detailed discussion of the modelling approach and key assumptions.

Read the publication. 

Quality of Life Research

A new paper published in Quality of Life Research provides important evidence on the impact of wounds on quality of life for people with dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB), a rare inherited condition.

The study, co-authored by YHEC's Damian Lewis and Andria Joseph, elicited health state utility values for different wound-related health states, considering factors including the number and area of wounds, pain, itch and time spent managing wounds.

Using vignette-based valuation, the researchers found that these wound-related symptoms can have a substantial impact on health-related quality of life. The findings help address an important evidence gap for the economic evaluation of treatments for DEB.

Read the full publication.

Health Economics and Policy

What happens when the data needed to measure quality of life are missing?

Missing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) data can introduce bias into health technology assessments (HTAs) and cost-utility analyses. But how should missing values be handled?

This new simulation-based study evaluated nine imputation methods across different levels and mechanisms of missingness.

YHEC’s Joe Moss, Neil Hansell, Erin Barker and Professor Matthew Taylor are co-authors.

Read the paper.

Interested in a career in health economics and evidence-based research?

YHEC brings together experts working across health economics, health technology assessment, evidence synthesis, outcomes research and more.

We’re always interested in hearing from people who want to contribute to work that helps inform healthcare decision-making.

Keep an eye on current vacancies and find out more about working at YHEC on our website.