Research and projects
Main research topics: health policy, insurance, financing and management; pharmaceuticals and health technology analysis; biotechnology, disease burden and quality of life studies in a wide variety of disease areas.The department operates within the Institute of Social and Political Sciences.
Higher Education Institutional Excellence Program
Health, social burden: current and future costs, need for innovation and evaluation sub-project
This sub-project examined the caring services for elderly and chronic patients in Hungary under the frame of the 3-years. The sub-project prioritized overviewing the existing international and domestic research and innovation activities in certain areas of expertise (health and social spheres, technological developments, health economics analyzes). The other key aim was to create a national database that provides adequate input data on answering the above issues from multidisciplinary and social viewpoints.
In the course of the research, education was a priority for young researcher replenishment. In the third year of the research program, the main tasks were to generate primary data and develop further innovative models to facilitate cost-effective decision making in health policy. In the project, it was a highlighted emphasis on talent care and ensuring young researcher replenishment. We could also successfully admit this in the third project year. In the 2020 project year, we reached the number of employed researchers planned. In implementing its tasks in the third project year, 6 senior researchers, 5 young researchers, 1 senior researcher from abroad (Miklós Farkas, University of Bristol, UK), 7 doctoral students and 4 master students participated. Alltogether 19 researchers (post doc and a PhD student) involved in the project, with 9.5 FTE capacity. At the Department of Health Economics, two assistant lecturer (Péter Balázs and Ákos Szabó) started their work who joined the program as MSc students in 2019. During the third project year, one PhD student successfully defended his doctoral dissertation (Zsuzsanna Beretzky, 17 September 2020).
In year 3 of the project, three new studies were designed and carried out. We developed three new general population questionnaire surveys, investigating mental illness, the COVID-19 epidemic and societal valuation of childhood health status. We developed study protocols and questionnaires, which were approved by university ethical committee.
• Care for mental illnesses. Mental illnesses cause substantial societal and economic burden through intensive use of health and social care systems, absence from work and education and increased care requirement. We have developed research plan and an online questionnaire for assessing societal preferences, quality of life, productivity and well-being related to mental illnesses. The data collection took place in July 2021.
• COVID-19 epidemic. The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection has erupted in November 2019 resulting in the closing of health care institutions, isolation and financial problems for families. We have developed a research plan and an online questionnaire for assessing the fear of pandemics, vaccine hesitancy and the costs associated with isolation. The purpose of the study is to understand better the impact of Covid-19 virus infections on the quality of life of the Hungarian population. We assessed also the labour market effects of epidemic. Data collection was conducted in 2021 May and June.
• Health status in childhood: In the third research, we investigated societal preferences for children’s health status. We elicited social utility weights for different childhood health status. The data collection consisted of two parts, an online questionnaire survey was carried out between April and May 2021. In the personal interview survey four MSc students have taken part between March and August 2021.
We have completed our publication commitments successfully. In the 3rd year of the program, we continued to publish the results of questionnaire surveys collected in previous years. Nine English (2 D1, 6 Q1, 1 Q1) and two Hungarian (2 Q3) research papers have been published. Moreover, we presented 10 conference abstracts at international and local conferences. We improved the research infrastructure by creating a doctoral research room..
In the Hungarian population, we examined mental illnesses, Covid-19 epidemic and the societal valuation of health conditions in childhood. We selected a market research company for performing the data collection. We have developed the research plans and the documents required for the ethical approval. We also focused on supporting the dissemination of the scientific results. Three external experts participated form the industry: Balázs Jenei (KSH), Gergely Németh (National Health Insurance Management) and Dózsa Csaba (Medecon Kft.). All three have participated in the development of innovative cost-benefit analyses for national coverage for health care services
HealthPros PhD Program
May 2018
Prof. Niek Klazinga’s visit at the Department
Prof. Niek Klazinga (Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam), the leader of the HealthPros program and the Honorary Professor of Corvinus University of Budapest visited the Department of Health Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest on the 14th May 2018. Prof. Klazinga and our collegues at the Department of Health Economics reviewed the initial tasks in the HealthPros project and discussed future plans as well.
Great interest in the HealthPros Training Network worldwide!
The recruitment of the HealthPros Training Network started officially mid-January 2018. Although applications started slow, the last week before the deadline it exploded with in the end 141 interested applicants from 104 countries! So far, 21 candidates applied for the 2 research positions at BCE. Currently, we are approaching and interviewing selected applicants. Our aim is to have all the ESRs (Early stage researchers) on board in September 2018.
February 2018
Kick-off of HealthPros
The kick-off meeting of the HealthPros consortium was held February 6th 2018 at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. All partners introduced themselves and their research and the plans for the research projects were discussed. Additionally, the road ahead was discussed, starting of course with the recruitment of 13 early stage researchers, but also the first week of training (planned for October/November 2018 together with the next consortium meeting).
On the meeting, our Department was represented by Prof. László Gulácsi.
January 2018
New H2020 project at the Department of Health Economics
We are proud to announce that from January 2018, the Department of Health Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest participates in a 4 years-long Marie Sklodowska-Curie project, the „Innovative Training Networks for Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professional” (HealthPros;. project nr. 765141) funded by the European Horizon 2020 Programme with the lead of Associate Prof. Petra Baji and Prof. László Gulácsi (Department of Health Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest).
With a total budget of 3,3 million Euros, the Consortium is led by the Honorary Professor of Corvinus University of Budapest, Niek Klazinga and Dionne Kringos, the Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam. Besides Corvius, partner institutes are North Denmark Region/Aalborg University Hospital (Denmark), Optimedis AG (Germany), University of Surrey (United Kingdom), Scuola Superiori di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento Sant’Anna (Italy), and the University of Toronto / Canadian Institute for Health Information (Canada).
The program offers an innovative 3-years PhD programme of collaborative, multidisciplinary and entrepreneurial training for early stage researchers. The aim of the program is to train the first generation of Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professionals (HealthPros) that can bring multidisciplinary expertise from areas such as medicine, social sciences, computer science and health policy in order to make effective use of available healthcare performance data to continuously improve health systems and services. The training includes a variety of training modules as well as transferable skills courses, secondments and active participation in workshops and conferences, as well as continuous collaboration with potential future employers in the private / public / academic HC sectors. The HealthPros Training Network brings together leading academics in the field of data science and health care performance assessment and improvement, as well as a wider immersion community, including health insurance companies, national and regional agencies, multi-national consulting and pharma companies.
Under this program, two Early Stage PhD Researcher positions are now open at the Department of Health Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest from September, 2018. We are looking for applications from motivated candidates with less than 4 years of research experience and no PhD degree (more info on the call on our website.)
Applications are invited for 13 ESRs (Early Stage Researchers) funded by the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network HealthPros (Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professionals) within the European Horizon 2020 Programme.
HealthPros is an international consortium of high profile universities, research institutions and companies located in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. We are looking for 13 PhD positions.
HealthPros aims to deliver the next generation of leading, entrepreneurial, and creative healthcare performance intelligence professionals having expertise, skills, and experience to make effective use of available healthcare performance data in countries to improve integrated service delivery, patient engagement, equality in access to healthcare, health outcomes, and reduce waste in healthcare. In HealthPros we will focus on developing tools and implementing methods to streamline healthcare performance measurement, the development and application of performance-based governance mechanisms and effective use of Healthcare Performance Intelligence by different end-users across health care systems.
For more information please visit www.healthpros-h2020.eu and see HealthPros Recruitment.
December 2017
European Commission funds European Training Network for Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professionals (HealthPros) : 13 PhD positions available from Summer 2018
A new generation of healthcare professionals is needed to support healthcare systems to achieve a balance between improving the health of populations, delivering quality care for individuals, and containing costs. To meet this need, a European “Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks” grant has been awarded to the Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professional (HealthPros) Consortium, led by the Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands; coordinator; D. Kringos, N. Klazinga), North Denmark Region/Aalborg University Hospital (Denmark; J. Mainz, S.P. Johnsen), Optimedis AG (Germany; O. Groene), University of Surrey (United Kingdom; S. de Lusignan, F. Carinci), Scuola Superiori di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento Sant’Anna (Italy; S. Nuti, A. Murante), Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary; L. Gulácsi, P. Baji), and the University of Toronto (R. Cockerill) / Canadian Institute for Health Information (Canada; K. Morris).
Starting in January 2018, the consortium will train 13 PhD candidates into a first generation of Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professionals (HealthPros) that can make effective use of available healthcare performance data in countries to improve integrated service delivery, patient engagement, equality in access to healthcare, health outcomes, and reduce waste in healthcare.
The HealthPros Training Network will provide an innovative 3-years programme of collaborative, multidisciplinary and entrepreneurial training to the PhD candidates. Through innovative research, HealthPros will develop tools and implement methods to streamline healthcare performance measurement, the development and application of performance-based governance mechanisms and effective use of Healthcare Performance Intelligence by different end-users, that match the different health care systems in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, UK, Italy, Hungary and Canada, and will support the transferability of the tools and methods to other countries.
The HealthPros consortium will start recruiting for PhD positions in January 2018. Suitable PhD candidates should be willing to be based abroad, not have more than 4 years of research experience, and not have a doctoral degree.
Read more about the HEALTHPROS Project: http://cordis.europa.eu/search/result_en?q=healthpros
For more info on the recruitment process, please contact d.s.kringos@amc.uva.nl
PECUNIA
Optimising Healthcare Provision in Europe:
The European research project PECUNIA (“ProgrammE in Costing, resource use measurement and outcome valuation for Use in multi-sectoral National and International health economic evaluAtions“) aimed to establish standardised costing and outcome assessment measures for optimised national healthcare provision in the European Union. Coordinated by Professor Judit Simon at the Medical University of Vienna, the three-year-project brought together ten partners from six countries with complementary methodological expertise.
Project Coordinator:
Medical University of Vienna, Center for Public Health, Department of Health Economics
Judit Simon
Phone: +43 140160 34841
judit.simon@muv.ac.at
Hungarian Contact
Department of Health Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest
Valentin Brodszky
valentin.brodszky@uni-corvinus.hu
Read more about PECUNIA here.