R for trial and model-based cost-effectiveness analysis

We are excited to announce the R for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) workshop that will be held on Thursday 8th, Friday 9th, and Monday 12th June 2023.

Friday 9th will be an in-person day-long, hybrid event hosted by at ARRC/Alan Maynard, University of York, while the other days will be online only. Our programme will be announced in April. The overall goal is to present interesting and enlightening presentations on the use of R that will engage an audience of those working in the field of health technology assessment and related analysis. Sessions may cover some or all of the following:

  • New methods and applications for economic modelling using R
  • Efficient modelling for economic evaluation using dedicated R packages
  • Improving modelling for HTA using R – Lessons from industry and academia
  • Teaching economic evaluation and HTA using R

Registration for the workshop can be made at this webpage. Please note that we can only accept payments via credit card.

The registration fee is structured as follows

Attendance typeStandard priceLMIC and students discount*
Online only (8, 9 and 12 June 2023)£50£10
In person (9 June) and online (8 and 12 June 2023)£80£65

NB: LMIC relates to country of residence/occupation and not origin. When registering, you will be asked to give details of your student status or country of occupation.

Registration for the workshop is now open through the UCL Online Store

We look forward to seeing you there!


Full programme

Day 1. Thursday 8th June

9:00-9:10. Gianluca Baio. Welcome.
9:10-9:30. Hanneke (J.M.) van Dongen. Trial-based economic evaluations; how to improve their analysis?
9:30-9:50. Jan Heijdra Suasnabar. University of Leiden. Adapting an open-source R Markov model in Coeliac disease screening from the UK to Dutch setting.
9:50-10:10. Anna Grootendorst, AstraZeneca and Erasmus University Rotterdam. Calibration of transition probabilities for a three-health state model from digitized Kaplan-Meier curves
10:10-10:30. Fernando Alarid-Escudero, University of Stanford. An efficient nonparametric sampling method of time to event for individual-level models.
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-11:05. Zachary Waller, Queens University Belfast. Creating R packages for reusing analysis across projects
11:05-11:25. Xavier Pouwels, University of Twente. Systematically validating health economic models using the the Probabilistic Analysis Check dashBOARD (PACBOARD)
11:25-11:45. John Macharia Kiragu, University of Nairobi. Predictors of Covid19 disease among hospital staff in Kenya
11:45-12:05. Kristof Theys, Axtalis. Modelling behaviour shift in pen needle reuse of patients with diabetes using insulin: An example of how R can be used in Market Access
12:05-13:00. Lunch.
13:00-14:00. Panel discussion. Chair: Raquel Aguiar-Ibanez – MSD, panellists: Kalle Aaltonen, Finnish Pharmaceuticals Pricing Board; Natalia Kunst - University of Oslo and Norwegian Directorate of Health; Anders Viberg - TLV (Sweden); Arthur White NCPE - National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (Ireland).
14:00-14:15. James O’Mahony. Closing Remarks.

Day 2. Friday 9th June.

10:00-10:10. Pedro Saramago. Welcome
10:10-10:40. Rob Smith, Dark Peak Analytics. R Packages for health economic evaluation: A tutorial.
10:40-11:00. Mary Ward, University of Bristol. Expected Value of Sample Information of Multi-Arm Multi-Stage trial designs comparing Directly Acting Oral Anticoagulants for the prevention of stroke in Atrial Fibrillation
11:00-11:20. Christopher Fawsitt, Clifton Insight. R or Excel for semi-Markov modelling of the cost-effectiveness of treatment sequences in hepatocellular carcinoma
11:20-11:40. Nichola Naylor, UKHSA. R for Evidence Synthesis in Health Economic Modelling: An Inflation and Exchange Rate Package for Estimating Unit Costs within and across Countries
11:40-12:00. Coffee/Tea Break.
12:00-12:20. David Glynn, Centre for health economics, University of York. Cluster Computing for Dummies.
12:20-12:40. Christopher Jackson, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge. survextrap: a new model and package for flexible and transparent survival extrapolation
12:40-13:00. Daniel Gallacher, University of Warwick. SurvInt: A simple tool to obtain precise parametric survival extrapolations in HTA
13:00-14:00. Lunch.
14:00-14:20. Michael Sweeting, AstraZeneca. Features of the R post-estimation standsurv function in flexsurv to facilitate survival extrapolation using excess hazard models
14:20-14:40. Neil Hawkins, Visible Analytics. 18 Years of R in HTA. The good, the bad, and the ugly
14:40-15:00. Gabriel Rogers, University of Manchester. Incorporating external data into a health economic analysis pipeline in R: how-to and whether-to
15:00-15:20. Howard Thom. Closing remarks and open discussion.
15:30 onwards. Informal discussion at Deramore Arms (10 minutes’ walk from venue)

Day 3. Monday 12th June

13:00-13:10. Howard Thom. Welcome.
13:10-13:30. Petros Pechlivanoglou, University of Toronto. Expanding the reach of open-source decision modeling: An update on DARTH’s government engagement initiatives.
13:30-13:50. Jasper Zhongyuan Zhang, Child Health Evaluative Sciences Program, The Hospital for Sick Children. SurvdigitizeR: R package to automate the digitization of published Kaplan-Meier Curves.
13:50-14:10. Ivan Zimmerman. University of Brazilia. Extrapolation of survival curves for health economic evaluation: an application of direct fitting to aggregated data
14:10-14:25. Break.
14:25-14:45. Philip Cooney, Trinity College Dublin and Novartis. Expertsurv: A Shiny Application for Direct Incorporation of Expert Opinion into Survival Models
14:45-15:05. Gregory Chen, Merck Sharp & Dohme. R pipeline to support additional analyses of clinical trial data for HTA/reimbursement dossiers
15:05-15:25. Devin Incerti. EntityRisk. Python for HTA? Why R shouldn’t be the only language at the table
15:25-15:40. Break.
15:40-16:10. Tim Disher, Eversana. Large Language Models and their potential in HTA.
16:10-16:30. Tom Bromilow, York Health Economics Consortium. Interactive shiny apps for the general public: a utility elicitation example
16:30-16:50. Hawre Jalal, University of Ottawa. R you still using tunnels?
16:50-17:00. Pedro Saramago. Closing remarks.

Gianluca Baio
Gianluca Baio
Professor of Statistics and Health Economics