Maastricht University is organizing a two-day post-academic course Health Technology Assessment (HTA) on the 27 and 28 June in Maastricht. This course focuses on economic evaluation studies, that provide insight into the efficiency and sustainability of healthcare.

Due to a number of developments, there is a growing need for knowledge about efficiency in healthcare, such as rising healthcare expenditure, expensive medicines, increasingly complex healthcare demand, and the threat of scarcity on the healthcare labor market. In addition, new interventions are often more effective, but they are associated with higher costs than existing care. The question that arises is how much society is willing to pay to achieve extra health benefits. But also whether we provide the right care by the right person at the right place. The use of HTA / economic evaluation studies provides insight into this and can make an essential contribution to more efficient healthcare and the (further) development and prioritization of (new) treatments within healthcare. Research into this type of information is increasingly central to the various grant providers, f.i. European Calls.

This HTA course provides insight into the basic principles of economic evaluation studies and will focus in particular on aspects that are important in research into efficiency, so that after the course participants are able to - in addition to research into the effectiveness of the intervention - also have an economic set up an evaluation study. This intensive course will be given in English and is suitable for every scientist without any prior knowledge in this field. Within the course, lectures are alternated with interactive teaching methods. During the course there is also the opportunity to look at the possibilities for economic evaluation studies within the research of the participants. For more information and to register see the course website.