Canonical Definitions
for Health Economics
Machine-readable, citable definitions for every concept in health economics — each with a stable URI, structured JSON-LD, and a verified authority record.
Data Sources
4Healthcare Resource Group code — a classification system for grouping clinically similar hospital episodes with similar resource use.
Annual data published by NHS England on the average costs of healthcare activities in the NHS.
Annual publication providing unit costs for health and social care services in the UK.
The cost per unit of a healthcare resource, used to translate resource use into monetary values.
Decision Rules
3The ratio of the difference in costs to the difference in effects between two healthcare interventions.
A summary statistic expressing the value of a healthcare intervention at a given willingness-to-pay threshold.
The maximum cost per QALY that a decision-maker considers acceptable for a new healthcare intervention.
Economic Methods
5An assessment of the financial consequences of adopting a new healthcare intervention within a defined budget.
An economic evaluation in which both costs and health outcomes are expressed in monetary terms.
An economic evaluation comparing the costs and health outcomes of alternative interventions.
An economic evaluation that compares costs when two interventions have been shown to produce equivalent health outcomes.
A form of cost-effectiveness analysis in which health outcomes are expressed in quality-adjusted life years.
Model Structures
11A health state from which patients cannot transition to any other state, typically representing death.
A model that simulates a hypothetical cohort of patients, tracking the proportion in each health state over time.
The unit of time over which transitions between health states occur in a Markov model.
A model structure representing branching sequences of decisions and chance events over a short time horizon.
A simulation methodology that models patient pathways as sequences of discrete events occurring at specific points in time.
An adjustment to Markov model outputs that assumes transitions occur uniformly throughout a cycle rather than at the start or end.
A discrete clinical condition assigned to patients within a Markov or similar state-transition model.
A state-transition model in which patients move between discrete health states over time according to transition probabilities.
An individual-level simulation model that tracks each patient separately and allows for patient heterogeneity.
A model structure that uses survival curves to partition patients between health states at each time point.
A temporary health state in a Markov model that patients must pass through for a defined number of cycles before transitioning.
Outcome Measures
3A standardised instrument for measuring health-related quality of life across five dimensions.
A measure of disease burden that combines length of life and quality of life into a single metric.
A preference-based measure of health-related quality of life, anchored at 0 (death) and 1 (perfect health).
Parameters
6An unintended harmful outcome associated with a medical treatment or intervention.
The probability of an event occurring in the absence of the intervention being evaluated.
The rate at which future costs and outcomes are reduced to present values in economic evaluations.
The quantities of healthcare resources consumed by patients in a health economic model.
The period over which costs and outcomes are modelled in a health economic analysis.
The probability that a patient moves from one health state to another within a single model cycle.
Regulatory Concepts
4The extent to which a healthcare intervention produces beneficial health outcomes in real-world clinical practice.
A multidisciplinary process that evaluates the clinical, economic, and societal implications of health technologies.
A formal assessment by NICE of the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a health technology for use in the NHS.
An arrangement between a pharmaceutical company and NHS England to improve the cost-effectiveness of a medicine.
Statistical Methods
13A method of testing model sensitivity by varying one or more parameters while holding others constant.
The projection of model parameters or outcomes beyond the observed follow-up period of clinical trials.
The ratio of hazard rates between two groups, commonly used to express treatment effects in time-to-event analyses.
A method for comparing treatments not directly compared in randomised trials using a common comparator.
A statistical technique for simultaneously comparing multiple treatments using both direct and indirect evidence.
A sensitivity analysis in which a single parameter is varied while all others are held at their base case values.
A method for propagating parameter uncertainty through a model by simultaneously sampling from probability distributions.
The ratio of the probability of an event in the exposed group to the probability in the unexposed group.
An analysis in which alternative sets of structural or parameter assumptions are tested simultaneously.
A formal process for quantifying expert opinion as probability distributions for use as model inputs.
Analysis of outcomes within a defined subset of the trial or model population.
Statistical methods for analysing time-to-event data, such as time to death or disease progression.
A framework for quantifying the potential benefits of further research by estimating the expected costs of parameter uncertainty.