Average Cost-Effectiveness
A measure comparing an intervention's total cost to its total effect, without reference to an alternative comparator.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Average Cost-Effectiveness Ratio
The total cost of an intervention divided by its total health effect, calculated for each option rather than as a comparison.
Average Length of Stay
A measure found by dividing total patient-days within a facility by discharges over the same period, an indicator of efficiency.
Average Treatment Effect
The mean difference in outcomes that would occur if every member of a population received a treatment versus a comparator instead.
Background Hazard
The rate of death from causes unrelated to the disease under study, applied to represent risk a patient would face regardless of the condition.
Bargaining Theory
A branch of economic theory analysing how parties negotiate to reach a mutually acceptable agreement when their interests partly conflict.
Basic Reproduction Number
The average number of secondary infections produced by one infected person in a fully susceptible population with no interventions in place.
Basket Trial
A trial design evaluating a single treatment, often targeting a specific genetic marker, across multiple disease types simultaneously, rather than one disease.
Bathtub Hazard
A hazard pattern that is high early in follow-up, declines to a stable middle period, then rises again later, resembling a bathtub's shape.
Baumol Effect
A phenomenon in which wages in labour-intensive, low-productivity-growth sectors rise alongside wages in high-productivity sectors, driving up the labour-intensive sector's relative cost.
Bayes Theorem
A mathematical formula describing how to update the probability of a hypothesis based on new evidence, combining a prior probability with a likelihood.
Bayesian Adaptive Design
A trial design using Bayesian statistics to formally update hypothesis probabilities as data accumulate, allowing pre-specified adaptive decisions such as early stopping.
Bayesian Analysis
A general statistical approach combining prior beliefs with observed data to produce updated posterior beliefs, unlike classical frequentist methods.
Bayesian Analysis CEA
The application of Bayesian statistical methods to cost-effectiveness analysis, combining prior beliefs with observed trial data to produce posterior distributions.
Bayesian Information Criterion
A statistic comparing candidate models fitted to the same data, similar to the Akaike criterion but penalising complexity more as sample size grows.
Bayesian Meta-Analysis
An approach combining evidence across studies using Bayesian methods, formally incorporating prior information to produce a posterior effect estimate distribution.
Bayesian Optimisation
A statistical approach updating probability estimates as new evidence arrives, used to combine prior information with observed trial data in modelling.
Bed Turnover
A measure of how frequently a hospital bed is used by different patients, calculated by dividing discharges by average available beds.
Begg Test
A statistical test for detecting publication bias in a meta-analysis, based on the rank correlation between effect size and its variance.
Benefit-Cost Ratio
The ratio of the monetised value of a programme's benefits to its costs, used as a summary measure in cost-benefit analysis.