Dictionary
The Dictionary provides concise definitions of health economics terms, arranged alphabetically for quick reference. Use it to understand unfamiliar terminology or confirm the meaning of a specific term.
A
- Adverse Event
- An injury caused by medical management, rather than a patient's underlying disease, resulting in prolonged hospitalisation, disability, or death.
- Adverse Event Cost
- The expense of managing a treatment's side effects, covering additional medical visits, hospitalisation, and supportive medications required.
- Adverse Event Rate
- A measure of how frequently patients experience unintended harm from medical care, rather than their underlying condition, within a defined population.
- Adverse Event Reporting
- The systematic process of documenting and communicating instances of patient harm from medical care, used to identify patterns and target improvement.
C
- Clinical Trial Data
- Data collected within a clinical trial's structured framework, including detailed outcome, adverse event, and often resource use measurements, under controlled conditions.
- Common Terminology Criteria
- A standardised grading system classifying the severity of adverse events observed in trials, widely used across oncology and other areas.
D
- Dose-Limiting Toxicity
- A sufficiently severe adverse event in early-phase trials that prevents further dose escalation, used to help determine the maximum tolerated dose.
- Dropout
- The premature discontinuation of a study participant's involvement before planned completion, whether from withdrawn consent, adverse events, or lost contact.
G
- Global Trigger Tool
- A structured methodology retrospectively reviewing records for indicators suggesting a possible adverse event, more comprehensively estimating true harm rates than voluntary reporting.
P
- PRO-CTCAE
- A patient-reported system complementing the clinician-reported Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, letting patients report symptom frequency, severity, and interference directly.
R
- Root Cause Analysis
- A systematic process investigating a serious adverse event to identify its fundamental, underlying causes, rather than only surface-level circumstances.
S
- Safety
- The degree to which an intervention avoids causing unintended harm, assessed through systematic monitoring and reporting of adverse events.
- Safety Population
- The complete set of trial participants who received at least one dose of study treatment, used to assess adverse events regardless of original assignment.
- Serious Adverse Event
- An untoward medical occurrence during research or treatment resulting in death, life-threatening risk, hospitalisation, or persistent significant disability, per international guidance.
T
- Treatment-Emergent Adverse Event
- An adverse event occurring or worsening during a trial period following study treatment administration, regardless of whether causally related.
U
- Utility Structure
- The way a decision-analytic model assigns health state utility values, including adjustments for factors such as age or treatment-related adverse events.
W
- Withdrawal
- The voluntary or involuntary discontinuation of a participant's trial involvement before its planned completion, whether from adverse events or personal choice.