Health Services Research (HSR) and Health Economics in Radiation Oncology (HERO)  

Online Course - starting date 

• 7 November: release of the pre-course recorded lectures
• 21 November: Live virtual session consisting of three panel sessions
   
  • 13.00-14.00 CET – Access to Radiotherapy
  • 14.00-15.00 CET – Costing in Radiotherapy
  • 15.00-16.00 CET – HTA and VBHC in Radiotherapy

Course directors

Y Lievens (BE) Course Director

E Zubizarreta (AT) Course Director

A Aggarwal (UK)

M Barton (AU)

H Blommestein (NL)

JM Borras (ES)

N Defourny (UK)

C Grau (DK)

D Rodin (CA)

Course aim 
The general objectives of healthcare are to ascertain quality, availability, accessibility and efficiency of care. In an era of tight healthcare budgets, all these aspects are more than ever relevant. Besides the slow transition of clinical evidence into daily practice due to patient and physician factors, the limited availability of resources - often consequence of socio-economic factors - may be limiting access to healthcare, especially to innovative treatments that typically come with a higher cost. Accurately estimating the cost of new radiation treatments remains a challenge but it is required as a first step to determine their cost-effectiveness (i.e. efficiency), hence acceptability, from a societal perspective. To do so, economic evaluations are performed, balancing their additional costs to their expected clinical benefits, compared to standard-of-care. In addition, budget impact analyses define whether the introduction of new interventions in daily practice is affordable, now, and in the future. Value also weighs costs and outcomes, however, puts the patient, and the outcome most favoured by the patient, in the centre of the equation.  

All these aspects are part of a broader health technology assessment program that should endorse the uptake of established and valuable new interventions by the healthcare system, hence support their reimbursement. 

Learning Objectives 
To provide understanding of: 

• The availability and accessibility of radiotherapy services and resources; 
• The needs of radiotherapy, both in terms of number of treatments delivered as of resources required to deliver these treatments; 
• How radiotherapy resource costs are calculated; 
• How costs relate to reimbursement and how the reimbursement system can drive practice; 
• Economic evaluations, with a focus on the context of radiotherapy; 
• Budget impact analysis, with a focus on the context of radiotherapy; 
• How investment cases can be developed for radiotherapy; 
• What value-based healthcare means for radiotherapy; 

To facilitate: 

• Networks between radiation oncology professionals interested in different aspects of health services research 

Who should attend?  
Radiation oncologists, medical physicists, RTTs with an interest of how health services research impacts the way we can deliver care to our patients; health economists and health services researchers with an interest in oncology and radiotherapy. 

Programme
Available here.