Objectives

The course aims at improving the skills of those professionals from the many health related areas in the following fields: Evidence-based Medicine, Health Economics, Health Technology Assessment, Information Technology applied to Healthcare, Social Science applied to Healthcare, and Healthcare System Management. It aims to provide healthcare professionals, decision makers and policy makers with analytical tools that are based on economic principles.

The course will emphasize the fundamentals of health economics. Practical problems will be addressed and discussed considering the environment of proportionally increasing scarce resources. The process of healthcare decision-making and how it has been (or will be) influenced by the above mentioned fields will be explored and discussed. It is considered that improvements in the organization of health systems are as important as the development of new medical technologies.

The objective is not to teach research methods, but enable the students to appraise and understand the importance of good quality scientific work (evidence) as well as the barriers for implementing changes in the healthcare system. In summary, the course aims to broaden the view of the students regarding the challenges we face with the changing healthcare scenario, and better prepare them for a more conscious and responsible decision in his / her field of work.