Modelling Infectious Diseases and Health Economics

About

Mathematical models are increasingly used to study infectious disease transmission, simulate reactive strategies and inform policy. In this course we focus on dynamic or time-dependent models representing the transmission of evolutionary systems. We start with basic concepts of transmission models for infectious diseases and continue with parameter estimation and social contact patterns. The level of model complexity increases from deterministic compartmental models up to stochastic individual-based models and we provide hands-on tutorials in R.

Health interventions are assessed with respect to both effects and costs in health economic evaluations or health technology assessments. The objective is to optimize health outcomes for a constrained health budget. We elaborate in this course on cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses for infectious disease interventions with focus on vaccines. We demonstrate different types of uncertainty for economic evaluations and key aspects to evaluate preventive and curative medicine.

Course leader

Lander Willem

Target group

Health science professionals, (bio)statisticians, economists, mathematicians, etc. who want to expand their modelling toolbox and/or increase their understanding of cost-effectiveness analysis. Our 5-day course is suitable for those with a background in mathematics, statistics or econometrics. For example, the paper of Bjørnstad et al. (2020) describes part of the course material. We invite you to join us in Antwerp if this kind of research resonates with you. We will of course provide more details throughout the course.

Course aim

The student is able to describe the concepts of dynamic transmission models and pivotal structural choices to make, given different transmission routes.
The student is able to describe differences between deterministic and stochastic models.
The student is able to describe differences between population and individual-based models
The student is able to critically assess model applications for infectious disease transmission
The student understands key concepts of health economic evaluation
The student is able to generate, present and interpret cost-effectiveness results in the context of uncertainty
The student has insights in specific issues arising with health economic evaluation of vaccines
The student is able to critically assess economic evaluations of vaccines.

Fee info

The tuition fee includes includes course materials, coffee breaks, and a sandwich lunch. It does not include dinner, travel or accommodation.