The University of Sheffield is offering free online course on Health Technology Assessment: Choosing Which Treatments Get Funded. Students will focus on a key part of the information used to make these decisions – Health Technology Assessment (HTA).
In this four week course, applicants will find out how new drugs and treatments are assessed before being introduced. This course will start on July 24, 2017.
Course At Glance
Length: 4 weeks
Effort: 2 hours/week
Subject: Health Technology Assessment: Choosing Which Treatments Get Funded
Institution: University of Sheffield and Future learn
Languages: English
Price: Free
Certificate Available: Yes
Session: Course starts on July 24, 2017
Providers’ Details
The University of Sheffield’s diverse student population of nearly 25,000 of the brightest students from 117 countries learn alongside over 1,200 of the world’s top academics. The campus is based in the heart of Sheffield, a large, green city in the north of England.
About This Course
This course will help you understand how and why drugs and treatments are funded and discover how healthcare organizations make decisions about whether we should have access to certain treatments.
Why Take This Course?
This is a free online course. This MOOC will be offered with Video Transcripts in English. Applicants can get a verified certificate.
Learning Outcomes
In this course we looked at:
- What health technology assessment is and how it is applied by healthcare decision-makers to inform the choices they make about which drugs and treatments should be made available to patients- this means looking at both the benefits or effects of the treatment, and its costs.
- The kinds of evidence that can help us to decide whether a treatment is of benefit, and how much of a benefit it gives.
- The range of evidence types, with a focus on clinical trials, what they can offer, their limitations and why they are particularly important for HTA.
- The methods used to bring the existing research and evidence about a treatment together, so we can get a clear picture of what benefits the treatment offers. To do this, we looked at a technique called ‘sytematic reviewing’ which combines the evidence into a single report, and uses statistical techniques to bring the data from a number of studies together to create a single estimate of the effects of a treatment.
- The ways in which the costs of drugs and the economic impacts can be compared with those of existing treatments. To do this we looked at how a specific research technique, economic modelling, is used. We looked at the different kinds of model, their value in HTA and how they are combined with the evidence from our systematic review of the clinical effectiveness of a treatment to produce estimates of costs/benefit. We also looked at the final HTA report, to give a direct insight into the information that decision makers are presented with. We looked at how decision makers use the HTA report, in conjunction with a wider range of information and input, to make a final decision.
- We finished by briefly looking at how a decision to make a treatment available (or not) impacts on other health services.
Requirements
This course will help you understand how and why choices about drugs and treatments have been made. It may inspire you to think about a career in healthcare, local decision-making or academia.
Instructors
Claire Beecroft
I am an Information Specialist and University Teacher at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield.
How To Join This Course
- Go to the course website link
- Sign Up At FutureLearn
- Select a course and Join
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- After the start date, students will be able to access the course by following the Go To Course link on My Courses page.
- Applicants can buy, to show that they have completed a FutureLearn course.
- On some FutureLearn courses, learners will be able to pay to take an exam to qualify for a Statement of Attainment. (These are university-branded, printed certificates that provide proof of learning on the course topic(s)).