Dictionary

E

Early Access SchemeTermEAMS, Pre-Approval Access Scheme, Early Access Programme

A regulatory programme letting patients with a life-threatening condition access a promising unlicensed medicine before full marketing authorisation, based on preliminary evidence.

Early AdopterTermEarly User, Lead Adopter

An individual or organisation beginning to use a new innovation relatively early in its diffusion, often serving as an influential opinion leader.

Early AwarenessTermEarly Signal Detection, Emerging Technology Awareness

The initial identification of a new or emerging technology with significant future implications, before it reaches regulatory approval or wide use.

Early DetectionTermEarly Diagnosis, Timely Detection

The identification of a disease, most commonly cancer, at an earlier stage than would otherwise occur, typically through screening or symptom awareness.

Early Health Technology AssessmentConceptEarly HTA, Early Modelling

Early health technology assessment (early HTA) estimates a health technology's potential value during development to guide design, research and investment.

Early InterventionTermEarly Treatment, First-Episode Intervention

A mental health care approach emphasising identifying and treating conditions at their earliest stages, often targeting first signs of serious illness.

Earmarked TaxationTermHypothecated Tax, Dedicated Health Tax

A tax whose revenue is legally designated for a specific purpose, such as healthcare, rather than a government's general revenue fund.

ECOG Performance StatusConceptEastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status, ECOG PS, ECOG Score, ECOG Grade

ECOG Performance Status is a clinician-rated six-grade scale of a cancer patient's functioning, grade 5 being death, used for trial eligibility and models.

Ecological BiasTermEcological Fallacy, Cross-Level Bias, Aggregation Bias

A distortion arising when group-level associations are wrongly assumed to apply to individuals within those groups, potentially reversing the true relationship.

Ecological DesignTermEcological Study, Group-Level Study

An observational design analysing data at group or population level, such as regions, examining group-level exposure against group-level outcome rates.

Economic BurdenTermCost Burden, Societal Cost Burden

The total cost imposed on a health system, individuals, or society by a specific disease, injury, or risk factor.

Economic ChoiceTermChoice Under Scarcity, Economic Decision

A decision made among competing alternatives under scarcity, guided by the relative costs and benefits of each option.

Economic EvaluationConceptHealth Economic Appraisal, Cost-Outcome Analysis

Economic evaluation, often called health economic evaluation, compares the costs and outcomes of healthcare options to judge which offers the best value.

Economic EvidenceTermCost-Effectiveness Evidence, Value Evidence, Economic Data Health, Health Economic Data, Cost and Resource Data

Data and analysis addressing the costs, resource use, and cost-effectiveness of health interventions, distinct from clinical evidence on safety and efficacy alone.

Economic FoundationsTerm

Economic foundations is the area of health economics that covers the economic theory health economists rely on, from scarcity, opportunity cost, demand, supply and elasticity to markets and market failure, welfare economics and the demand for health and health capital.

Economic GoodTermEconomic Commodity, Priced Good

In health economics, any scarce good or service that commands a price and is subject to allocation choices, classified by rivalry, excludability and how consumers come to know its quality.

Economic IncentiveTermFinancial Inducement, Behavioural Incentive

A financial or non-financial inducement designed to encourage a particular decision or behaviour.

Economic Life YearsTermHuman-Capital Life Years, Years of Economic Productivity, Productive Life Years, Employment Life-Years, Workforce Participation Years, Working Life Years

A measure of the years an individual is expected to contribute economically productive activity, used in human capital approaches to valuing lost life.

Economic Model SubmissionTermModel Submission, Cost-Effectiveness Model Dossier

A formal submission of a health economic decision-analytic model, with supporting documentation, provided as part of a coverage application.

Economic ModellingTerm

Economic modelling is the area of health economics that combines evidence in a mathematical structure to estimate the long-term costs and health outcomes of competing options.

Economic PolicyTermEconomic Governance, Fiscal and Allocation Policy

A set of governmental choices affecting resource allocation, incentives, financing and economic activity.

Economic PrincipleTermEconomic Foundation, Foundational Economic Proposition

In health economics, a foundational proposition about how scarce resources are allocated, such as scarcity, opportunity cost and efficiency, underpinning the economic evaluation of health interventions.

Economic ReviewTermEconomic Evidence Review, Cost-Effectiveness Review

An evaluation of the economic evidence, including a submitted cost-effectiveness analysis, typically conducted by an independent technical reviewer.

Economically Justifiable PriceConceptEJP

The economically justifiable price (EJP) is the top price a manufacturer can defend on cost-effectiveness grounds at a given payer's threshold.

Economies of ScaleTermScale Economies, Falling Average Cost

A situation in which average cost of production falls as output rises, typically because fixed costs are spread across greater volume.

Edgeworth BoxConcept

The Edgeworth box is a diagram of each split of fixed amounts of two goods, such as health care and food, between two people, showing Pareto efficiency.

Effect EstimateTermEstimated Effect, Association Estimate, Estimate of Effect

A calculated numerical value representing the estimated magnitude of association between an exposure or treatment and an outcome, drawn from a specific study.

Effect ModificationTermStatistical Interaction, Moderation, Effect Measure Modification, Measure-Dependent Effect

A situation where an exposure's effect on an outcome genuinely differs across levels of a third variable, unlike confounding, which is a bias.

Effect SizeConceptMagnitude of Effect, Standardised Effect, Magnitude of Treatment Effect

Effect size is the magnitude of a treatment effect or association, on a scale such as a risk ratio or mean difference, used in HTA and economic models.

Effect Size EstimationConceptEstimating Effect Magnitude, Effect Quantification

The statistical process of calculating a quantitative measure of a treatment effect's magnitude, often standardised to allow comparison across differing measurement scales.

Effective CoverageTermOutcome-Weighted Coverage, Effective Reach

A measure of the proportion of a target population that both received an intervention and experienced the health gain it is intended to produce.

Effective Reproduction NumberConceptRt, Time-Varying Reproduction Number

The effective reproduction number (Rt) is the average number of people one case infects at time t, given immunity and control, used in vaccine models.

Effective Sample SizeConceptESS, Equivalent Random-Sample Size

Effective sample size (ESS) is the number of independent patients or draws that would match the precision of a clustered, weighted or correlated sample.

EffectivenessConceptReal-World Benefit, Routine-Practice Benefit

The benefits and harms an intervention produces under care conditions relevant to a specified population, comparator, outcome and time horizon.

Effectiveness EvaluationTermReal-World Performance Assessment, Effectiveness Appraisal

An assessment of how well a treatment performs under routine clinical practice conditions, typically using observational data or pragmatic trial designs.

Effectiveness EvidenceTermReal-World Performance Evidence, Practice-Based Evidence

Data demonstrating how well an intervention performs under real-world practice conditions, unlike efficacy evidence from controlled trial conditions.

Effectiveness OutcomeTermReal-World Outcome, Pragmatic Outcome

A clinical outcome measured under real-world, routine practice conditions, reflecting how a treatment performs across a diverse patient population.

Effectiveness StudyTermReal-World Study, Broad-Eligibility Study, Effectiveness Research, Effectiveness Studies, Real-World Effectiveness Studies

A research study assessing how well an intervention performs under real-world, routine clinical practice conditions, typically with broader eligibility and less monitoring.

EfficacyTermTrial Benefit, Ideal-Condition Benefit

The extent to which an intervention produces a beneficial result under the ideal, controlled conditions of a clinical trial.

Efficacy EvaluationTermEfficacy Assessment, Controlled-Condition Appraisal

An assessment of a treatment's effect under the controlled, idealised conditions of a clinical trial, estimating its maximum potential benefit.

Efficacy EvidenceTermControlled-Trial Evidence, Ideal-Condition Evidence

Data demonstrating an intervention's effect under the controlled, often idealised conditions of a clinical trial.

Efficacy OutcomeTermControlled-Condition Outcome, Ideal-Setting Outcome

A clinical outcome measured under the controlled, often idealised conditions of a trial, representing the maximum potential benefit achievable.

Efficacy-Effectiveness GapTermEfficacy-Effectiveness Difference, Trial-to-Practice Gap

The observed difference between a treatment's trial-demonstrated benefit and its actual benefit once used in routine clinical practice.

EfficiencyConceptProductive Resource Use, Value from Resources

Efficiency is getting the most health or other valued outcomes from scarce healthcare resources, avoiding waste and allocating them to their best uses.

Efficiency EvaluationTermEfficiency Assessment, Input-Output Appraisal

An assessment of how effectively a provider, programme, or system converts inputs into outputs, typically benchmarked against best-practice performance elsewhere.

Efficiency FrontierConceptEfficient Frontier, Cost-Effect Boundary

The efficiency frontier is the line joining the non-dominated treatments for one indication on a plot of benefit against cost, as used by Germany's IQWiG.

Efficiency Frontier AnalysisTermUnit Efficiency Benchmarking, Input-Output Frontier Study

A method identifying the best-observed combinations of inputs and outputs among comparable units, forming a frontier against which all others are benchmarked.

Efficiency IncentiveTermEfficiency Reward, Productivity Incentive

A financial reward or payment adjustment encouraging a provider to deliver care using fewer resources while maintaining or improving quality.

Efficiency IndexConceptEfficiency Score, Relative Efficiency Measure

An efficiency index is one number comparing the resources a hospital or health system uses with its outputs, against peers, national costs or a frontier.

Efficient DesignConceptInformation-Maximising Design, Optimal Choice-Task Design

An experimental design built to maximise the statistical information obtained from a given number of choice tasks.