Tools to measure and value health change in children (TORCH)
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Methodological challenges surrounding QALY estimation for paediatric economic evaluation
Journal article
Petrou S., (2022), Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation, 20
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Systematic Review of Conceptual, Age, Measurement and Valuation Considerations for Generic Multidimensional Childhood Patient-Reported Outcome Measures
Journal article
Kwon J. et al, (2022), PharmacoEconomics
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Preference Elicitation Techniques Used in Valuing Children’s Health-Related Quality-of-Life: A Systematic Review
Journal article
Bailey C. et al, (2022), PharmacoEconomics
Health agencies across the world regularly make recommendations to governments on whether the cost of a medicine should be subsidised. In making these recommendations, the safety, effectiveness and efficiency of the medicine compared to the alternative medicine or treatment must be considered.
Efficiency is estimated by economic evaluations that compare the cost and health outcomes of the new medicine with the alternative treatment.
Evaluations need to address outcomes specific to the medicine for example it could be a treatment for asthma or high blood pressure or diabetes. But importantly the evaluation must also consider the effects of the medicine or treatment on quality of life.
Health technology assessment agencies are well versed in the methods for measuring and evaluating quality of life in adults. However, due to many practical and methodological challenges in child populations this is not the case for medicines aimed at improving the health of children.
TORCH is an international-collaborative project that addresses these challenges through the development of reliable tools to support evaluations of the efficiency of medicines for improving the health of children. These will be directly relevant to decisions made by policymakers.
The programme will provide robust evidence on how health in children should be measured and incorporated when evaluating the efficiency of a new medicine or treatment. As there are many tools used to measure quality of life in children, TORCH will develop ways in which results from the most important ones can be incorporated into economic evaluations. This will overcome the need to rely on just one measure or tool.
Meeting the needs of policy makers and researchers is key to the success of TORCH. This will be achieved through a programme of workshops attended by a broad cross-section of stakeholders. These will be conducted over the course of the project.
Oxford project lead:
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Stavros Petrou
Academic Research Lead in Health Economics
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Joseph Kwon
Researcher in Health Economics
Project lead (Australia):
Emily Lancsar - Australian National University
COLLABORATORS:
See the full list of chief and research investigators here:
https://torchstudy.com.au/team
Dates:
October 2020 – September 2024
Funder:
Australian Medical Research Future Fund
Our team
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Stavros Petrou
Academic Research Lead in Health Economics
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Lucy Abel
Health Economist, DPhil student
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Felix Achana
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Laura Armitage
Wellcome Trust Doctoral Research Fellow
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Corneliu Bolbocean
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Laia Bosque Mercader
Research Fellow in Health Economics
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Lin Bowker-Lonnecker
DPhil Student
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John Buckell
Researcher
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Padraig Dixon
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Patrick Fahr
Quantitative Researcher
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Carmen Fierro Martinez
NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellow
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Nadeem Hussein
NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellow
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Joseph Kwon
Researcher in Health Economics
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Sungwook Kim
Senior researcher in Health Economics
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Joan Madia
Researcher in Health Economics
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Joaquim Vidiella Martin
Researcher in Economics
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Catia Nicodemo
Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics
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Olu Onyimadu
Health Economist, DPhil Candidate
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May Png
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Stuart Redding
Project Lead, Centre for Health Service Economics & Organisation
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Elizabeth-Ann Schroeder
Senior Researcher in Health Economics
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Raphael Wittenberg
Deputy Director, Centre for Health Service Economics and Organisation
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Yaling Yang
Senior Researcher in Health Economics