Health Economics and Big Data Analytics Major ENG

studenci MBA

Health Economics & Big Data Analytics

About the major

 

The HEBDA program is unique as it combines both Health Economics & Big Data science, which gives you opportunity to acquire the best fit for the future job market shaped by the digital health transformation.

Health Economics is a new but dynamically developing science. It is the discipline of economics applied to the topic of health care. Health Economics provides a set of methods and analytical approaches to study the effectiveness, efficiency and value of health technologies with the ultimate objective of optimal allocation of healthcare resources. According to the available estimates, the annual growth of medical expenses until 2022 will be at the rate almost twice as high as the one observed during the period 2013-2017.  It is mainly due to the growing medical needs caused by aging. More than 20% of global population will be above 60 years old by 2050. On top of it, as many as 14 million health workers will be missing by 2030. Given such enormous challenges, health economists are more and more needed. It is the job of health economics to develop the evidence-based decision-making approaches to allocate limited resources across different patient groups.

The business world is currently undergoing a revolution due to the increasing importance of Big Data, and the healthcare sector is no exception. "The Economist" states, that not oil but data is the most valuable resource of the 21st century. More information on health economics, and big data: here. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2.5 exabytes of data is created every day globally. Of what is stored, 30% is health related. There are already some examples indicating how Big Data analytics can support health economists to meet growing challenges of ageing and scarcity of healthcare workers by providing a new “oil” into the evidence-based decision-making models. In the upcoming years it is anticipated that there will be a large demand for data researchers and specialists in the healthcare industry. Data scientists with an health economics background will be more and more needed to develop new innovative solutions that help to allocate scarce healthcare resources across different patient groups.

Please be advised that the major will launch only if the minimum amount of 17 students sign up for the major.

Get to know the leader of the program

Prof. Katarzyna Kolasa

Driven with the passion to health economics, Katarzyna Kolasa has acquired more than 20 years of academic and commercial experience with the pricing & reimbursement challenges of medical technologies. At Bristol Myers Squibb and Lundbeck she was leading Market Access teams in Central Eastern European (CEE) and Nordic Region. She was part of Global and Regional Health Economics & Outcomes Research (HEOR) teams at AstraZeneca and BiogenIdec being based in Sweden and Switzerland respectively. Her practical skills in the field of health economics were developed during six years employment contract at the Kalmar County Council in Sweden as well.

For the last four years, she has been developing experience with the pricing &reimbursement challenges in the field of medical devices. Since 2016, Katarzyna has been representing Straub Medical as Global Market Access Lead being the External Principal Consultant for that Swiss family owned company. Prior to that, Katarzyna was employed as a Senior HEOR Director at GE Healthcare.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in health economics and is an author of more than 40 scientific IF publications in the field of health technology assessment, health economics and pharmacoeconomics. Katarzyna Kolasa reviews manuscripts submitted to such prestigious journals as Health Policy, Value in Health, Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research, International Journal for Equity in Health and International Journal of Technology Assessment.

Her extensive knowledge in the field of health economics was acquired at University of York, University of Lund, and University of Bergen as well as during International Doctoral Courses in Health Economics and Policy organized by the Swiss School of Public Health.

Untill April 2020, Prof. Katarzyna Kolasa has authored more than 40 scientific IF publications and delivered more than 1000 lectures to different groups of students. Prior to Kozminski University, she worked as Adiunct at Warsaw Medical University, Faculty of Pharamcy (2009-2015), Adjunct at Ludwik Rydygier Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz (2014-2016). She was a Visiting Lecturer at Łazarski MBA in Healthcare program and College of Pharmacoeconomics, HTA, Marketing and Pharmaceutical Law at the Warsaw School of Businesss.

In 2018, Prof. Kolasa was nominated by the Ministry of Science to represent Poland in the COST Action CA17117, COST Association „Towards an International Network for Evidence-based Research in Clinical Health Research”.

She teaches the application of health economics in the field of digital health at MBA Healthcare Program at Medical University in Lublin and Corvinius University in Budapest as well.

Until April 2020, she has given speeches at more than 40 international conferences. Katarzyna Kolasa is coleader of the course Risk-Sharing/Performance-Based Arrangements in Central & Eastern Europe: Implementation of Managed Entry Agreements organized annually by ISPOR.
Prof. Katarzyna Kolasa is a chair elect of the Digital Health Special Interest Group at ISPOR as well.

Profile of Prof. Kolasa, which includes scientific achievements.

Vladimir (Vlad) Zah, Ph.D. brings 20+ years of Health Economics technology and business experience.  Since 2000, in various roles as Health Economist, Project Manager and Chief Investigator, Dr. Zah has implemented more than 170 health economic models and assessments in the phase 2, 3 and 4 settings, across various disease areas, which resulted in over 50 publications. He also consults and has provided HTA training relating to both medications and medical devices to Ministry of Health, National Insurance Funds or at national congresses in Russia, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Republic of Srpska, Japan and India. Vladimir Zah has organized and led Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) consensus seeking project among representative European countries (Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Austria and Serbia) to identify common set of criteria for: a) rare diseases, b) late stage oncology. This project lasted from 2016 through 2018 and resulted in common criteria presented firstly with pilot data (2016), secondly after adjustments with final data (2017) and with manuscript in production. In addition to, over the years, we have organized many HTA roundtable discussions among different country representatives. Thus, his main focus would be on supporting the consensus development aspects of the project: seeking HTA consensus, collaboration and effective implementation

Katarzyna Piotrowska, MA, is employed as an assistant in the Department of Quantitative Methods and Applications of Computer Science. Her research interests focus on social research methodology, risk taking, economic psychology and statistics. Co-author of the ALK Sustainable Development Index. In the years 2008-2009 she was an intern at the Nobody's Children Foundation. Statistical editor of POLISH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW magazine (from 2015). Co-author of monographs, author of chapters in monographs and articles from JCR list. Active participant of national and international conferences.

Axel  Mühlbacher is a Professor of Health Economics and Health Care Management at Hochschule  Neubrandenbergand adjunct professor in the Duke Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University (USA). He is a CHPIR Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at the Duke Global Health Institute.He received his PhD in Economics from the Technical   University Berlin, and MSc in Business Administration from Eberhard-Karls Universitat (Tübingen). Past positions of Dr. Mühlbacher include assistant professor at Technische Universitat Berlin and research   fellow, German Coordinating Agency of Public Health, Albert-Ludwig Universitat Freiburg. He has also served on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Health as academic advisor to the steering committee, "Measures to create a new definition of 'requiring care,' and a new uniform instrument of evaluation" for the National Association of Statutory Health Funds.

Dr. Mühlbacher's research experience focuses on methodological advances in decision analysis, operations  research, econometrics and choice experiments and their application in the health domain. Recent work includes stated preferences research, empirical research to understand the behavioral  aspects  of  health and problems of multi-criteria decision making to inform the optimal design of policies and regulatory decision making. Dr. Mühlbacher has teaching experience in Health Economics, Health Economic Evaluation,Decision Making Theory, Evaluation of Health Care Innovations and Patient Preferences –Discrete choice experiments. Dr.Mühlbacher is a member of the International Health Economics Association, International Society for  Quality of Life  Research (Co-Chair SIG Preference Research), ISPOR Conjoint Analysis Experimental Design Good Research Practice Task Force. He currently also co-chairs the ISPOR Working Group stated preference in European healthcare decision making(Stated Preference Research in the European Union).

Ken Redekop, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Health Technology Assessment at the Institute for Medical   Technology Assessment, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is a clinical epidemiologist with more than 20 years of experience in observational research, clinical trial analysis, and medical technology assessment and an author of over 100 papers in the medical literature. Current studies include  early-stage cost-effectiveness analyses of medical devices and tests, RCT-based economic evaluations, economic evaluations in the Diagnostics Assessment programme of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE, UK) and outcomes research studies to determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of expensive medicines in daily practice. Most studies relate to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, and most involve modelling and evidence synthesis.

Joanna Leśniowska, PhD - Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Economics and Health Care Management at KU. Her scientific interests include health economics and health care, macroeconomic policy, institutional economics, management in the health sector. She is a member of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics, and Outcomes Research and Western Economic Association International (from 2014), and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (from 2015). Author of publications in the field of economics in international journals (also with IF coefficient assigned). Active participant of the conference at the national and international level.

For the patients struggling with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as their families and friends, the organization of everyday life activities can be challenging. Dementia Diary by Fashmel Applications offers an easy to use and modern way to support them. Find out more about its defining qualities by reading the review below. Oluwadara Olatoke and Karolina Borys are students of the first year of Health Economics and Big Data Analytics at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland. With Oluwadara’s medical background and Karolina’s in economics, they tried to put their Health Technology Assessment skills into practice by writing a review of a useful mobile application for seniors.

Unique Values

  • The innovative system of education is based on the latest achievements in the field of health economics and data science, and it has been defined from the perspective of the patient, payer, healthcare provider,  pharmaceutical and medical devices manufacturers.
  • The aim of the program is for you to acquire expertise and skills in the area of Big Data analysis, with a particular focus on the use of predictive modelling to be applied in in the digital health, pharmaceutical and other related industries.
  • Among the teaching staff we will host visiting professors from leading foreign academic centers e.g. University of Ljubljana, Hochschule Neubrandenburg, University of Illinois, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Lund University, University of York.
  • The first edition of HEBDA was co-financed from the Operational Program Knowledge Education Development - III axis - Higher Education for Economy and Development, Measure 3.1 - Competences in higher education. HEBDA was awarded with the greatest number of points across all proposals submitted for that call. In total, 30 students and 12 partners joined the first edition of HEBDA.

Meet the partners of the program's first edition

During the establishment of the program, the following partners were included as part of its corporate and public advisory board, so students can be sure that the courses and curriculum prepared meet national and global standards.

Strategic partner of the program:

Substantive Public Partners of the program:

Declared partners of the program:

See what we have done with our partners so far:

Who are the studies for?

This program is designed for you, if:

  • you have a bachelor's degree, and are passionate about data science
  • you are enthusiastic about the importance of big data in various industries especially the healthcare sector
  • you understand and feel comfortable with mathematics
  • you have an interest in economics, and would like to expand their knowledge (with a focus on health economics)

What you gain from your studies?

During the course of your studies you will acquire knowledge, skills and social competences, e.g. in the following:

  • fundamental knowledge of health economics and data science
  • functioning of markets and economic entities in the area of health care on a microeconomic, macroeconomic, regional, global and international scale, including the internal market of the European Union.
  • advanced statistical methods for big data analysis
  • forecasting and modelling of economic processes with the use of predictive modelling and decision algorithms, including e.g. building a treatment effectiveness model for health technologies
  • interpretation of the economic law regulations, and analysis of the legal environment of entities operating in the field of health protection
  • evaluation of the profitability of introducing new innovative solutions to the market by economic entities
  • analysing the impact of national health policies using statistical tools, including data on open and closed treatment
  • analysing for data research scientists in the field of pharmacy, medical devices, healthcare insurance and digital health
  • acquiring and analysing data for the needs of sales and marketing departments of entities providing healthcare services (including digital services), pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers and insurance companies

Career Opportunities

After graduation, you will be able to start your career as specialists in institutions dealing with the organization and financing of health services, as well as enterprises responsible for the production or distribution of health technologies. Job titles include:

  • Health Economics Advisor
  • Health Data Scientist
  • Health Economics Value Consultant
  • Clinical Outcomes Consultant
  • Health Outcomes Manager
  • Market Access Manager

Study Resources

Students have access to multiple study resources allowing them to collect all the necessary information for solving practical business problems as well as to dwell into academic science:

  • Real world data containing healthcare resources consumption
  • statistical and analytical software, as well as interpreted programming language, necessary to create, manage and integrate databases and perform statistical analysis.
  • KU library resources, including access to the international scientific journal "Value in Health".
  • Anonymized Real World Evidence data on large scale populations informing about patient pathways and treatment patterns (IQVIA databases)

Selected Courses

COURSES ON THE HEBDA MAJOR

  • Health Economics
  • Introduction to Health Tecgnology Assessment
  • Models of Healthcare Financing
  • Methodology of Economic Modelling in Healthcare
  • Big Data in Health Economics
  • Advanced Statistical Methods for Real World Data Analysis

Class Schedule

  • Full-time programs

Classes take place from Monday to Friday in the morning and in the afternoon.