Research Master in Health Sciences - Specialization in Health Economic Analysis

Overview

The Research Master program in Health Sciences aims to provide students with a thorough understanding of methods in either clinical or public health research. Specializations include clinical epidemiology, epidemiology, public health epidemiology, genetic and molecular epidemiology, and health economic analysis. After completion, candidates will have the knowledge, understanding, and skills to propose state-of-the-art studies, write excellent study protocols, perform the research, analyze the data using modern statistical techniques, make defensible causal inferences, come to justified conclusions, and write outstanding research papers. Depending on the choice of specialization, the candidate will focus on for example clinical trials, population studies, public health interventions, or modeling studies.

This program is NVAO accredited. For more information, visit the Netherlands-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) at www.nvao.net.

Objectives

Students acquire the following competencies:

• Ability to formulate a clinical or public health problem and translate it into a scientific question.
• Ability to perform an extensive study of the literature concerning a problem.
• Ability to translate a scientific question into a research protocol.
• Acquisition of quantitative skills.
• Ability to make causal inferences.
• Ability to critically appraise published research.
• Ability to conduct the research, collect and analyze data, and draw conclusions.
• Ability to write a Master’s thesis, including the objective(s) of the investigation, a summary of the literature, materials, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions of the research project and to present these findings at scientific meetings. Publication of the research findings in an international peer-reviewed journal is encouraged.

Career opportunities

The degree prepares you for a career in international medical research or for executive or advisory positions in clinical medicine, public health, pharmaceutical research, or health policy.

Are you eligible?

You should fit the following criteria:

• You have a Bachelor’s degree or a relevant Master’s degree from a discipline in or related to clinical medicine or public health (medical doctor, health sciences, nutrition, (medical) biology, chemistry, pharmacy, environmental sciences, human movement sciences, sociology, economics, psychology, etc.) or a broad Bachelor’s education with sufficient basic subjects in the above mentioned disciplines.
• You have a good working command of the English language, both oral and written.

Specialization Health Economic Analysis contents

Program director

A.E. Attema, Ph.D.

Description

Research in health economic analysis is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Health care costs are rising rapidly creating a serious concern for health care decision-makers around the world. The sustainability of the health care system, that is accessible and affordable to all, is hard to achieve and maintain. The difficulties related to ensuring a fair and comprehensive health care system are an important incentive for conducting health economic research.

This is why health economic analysis is a dynamic and growing research area with numerous job opportunities. The specialization offers a unique combination of epidemiological and health economic courses, which are aimed at teaching you important analytical and professional skills for designing, carrying out and reporting academic research in the field of health economics. Typically, as a health economic analysis student, you will deal with questions such as:

• How do we balance between the affordability of health care and quality of health care?
• Are new health care interventions worth the expenditure?
• How do health care systems perform relative to each other in terms of solidarity and affordability?
• Are health and health care distributed fairly within populations?
• How can we improve our current health economic research methods?
• How can we design health economic studies? This specialization is a joint venture between the NIHES and the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management. Prior knowledge of (health) economics is not required.

Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences (NIHES) is an international academic research institute that provides all courses and programmes in English.

Erasmus University Rotterdam is the founding organisation of the Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences (NIHES). NIHES was established in 1992 to further improve scientific research on determinants of diseases and health, the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare and services, and the theory and methods of health sciences. NIHES is a centre for quantitative research that provides graduate and postgraduate education in medicine and health sciences. The Institute also provides comprehensive research training for health professionals through the large array of courses in various disciplines. The programmes combine theoretical training and practical research training to prepare participants for research, executive and advisory positions. NIHES holds a very strong international position. It cooperates with a global network of leading research centres in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the USA.