title: [Health economics. Objectives, methodology, relevance].
abstract: The article briefly describes the development of health economics and defines its most important areas of research (e.g. subjective and objective valuation of health; demand for and supply of health services; health insurance; planning, regulation and management; evaluation of health systems; and microeconomic evaluation). Regarding economic evaluation, the article emphasises the choice of comparators, the assessment of costs and effects, the various types of economic analyses, average vs incremental cost-effectiveness, usage of trial data vs modelling as well as sensitivity analyses. It discusses the question of generalisability and introduces a checklist to assess quality and results of published studies.
authors.affiliation: Technische Universität, Berlin. rbusse@tu-berlin.de
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Busse
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000379:methods; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D004470:Economics, Medical; D005858:Germany; D017048:Health Care Costs; D018803:Models, Economic; D012107:Research Design