Linking Biomedical Informatics and Health EconomicsHealth & Biosecurity | Health Data Analytic Team

THE AUSTRALIAN E-HEALTH RESEARCH CENTRE

Yang Xie | yang.xie@csiro.au

HIC ignite stage | 30-Jul-2018

Background

• All national economies are now facing a continuing challenge due to a growing demand with finite resources

• By sharing similar purposes - improving health care quality and efficiency - the boundaries between health economics and health informatics have become less and less clear

Biomedical Informatics

Source of figure: Weber GM, Mandl KD, Kohane IS. Finding the missing link for big biomedical data. JAMA. 2014;311 :2479-80.

• Health informatics as a multidisciplinary field that applies knowledge from information science, computer science and social science, to study the information and communication systems in healthcare, with the ultimate aim of improving health care quality and efficiency

Healthcare Economics

• Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behaviour in the production and consumption of health and healthcare.

Source of figure: Williams A. (1987) Health Economics: The Cheerful Face of the Dismal Science?. In: Williams A. (eds) Health and Economics. British Association for the Advancement of Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London

How health economics can enable physicians and researchers to test new hypotheses and identify new opportunities of innovation

Example 1

How health informatics can be utilised to answer health economic and policy questions

Example 2

Key takeaways

• To health informatics researchers: talk to health economists

more frequently to seeks “causal” interpretability of results!

• To health economists: reach to health informatics researcher

more often to explore the ability of large-scale integration and

analysis of the heterogeneous health informatics data sources

when answering big economic questions!

• Always consider adding a health economic component to your

health informatics research, making the outcome more

impactful!

For more information, please contact:

THE AUSTRALIAN E-HEALTH RESEARCH CENTRE

Yang Xie

Postdoctoral Fellow

T: +61 7 3253 3649

E: Yang.Xie@csiro.au

W: www.aehrc.com

Thank you