Editorial

I am delighted to present to you our first PECUNIA newsletter.

With this issue we would like to introduce you to our project and partners and give some insights into our work in the first ten months. PECUNIA is a three-year research project (2018-2020) funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme and coordinated by the Medical University of Vienna. The ten partners from six European countries are joining forces to develop new standardised, harmonised and validated methods and tools for the assessment of costs and outcomes in European healthcare systems.

In particular, we aim to improve the comparability of economic evaluations between and within countries, contribute to the standardised assessment of resource use, unit costs and outcomes while considering not only the healthcare sector impacts but also the inter-sectoral aspects (social care, criminal justice, education, productivity, patients and their families) of health services. PECUNIA is taking the feasibility of robust, comparable evidence generation through multi-sectoral, multi-country and multi-person health economic evaluations for decision making to a next level via a unique stepwise harmonisation process in our full work programme. All this is carried out focusing on mental health disease areas with major public health burdens such as depression, schizophrenia and PTSD. Beyond our primary objectives, our ultimate goal is the contribution to future efficient and equitable solutions in the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders through the involvement of and collaboration with a broad stakeholder group.

In the first months of this project, we were happy to hold two successful project meetings in Vienna (Kick-off meeting) and Maastricht (1st Progress Meeting) where we laid the basis for achieving our first milestones – the concept paper and the country reports. This newsletter will give you more information on the progress we have made so far, our upcoming next steps and the events where the project will be presented in more detail.

Thank you for your interest and support – and enjoy reading this newsletter! We also invite you to check out our website, follow us and share your thoughts on Twitter #Pecunia_EU and ResearchGate.

Best regards,

About PECUNIA

The ten PECUNIA partners bring complementary methodological expertise into the project and represent six different healthcare systems with varying feasibility and acceptability of economic evaluations in evidence-informed decision-making. Some countries have established national unit cost programmes (DE, NL, UK), while others are working with early-stage initiatives (AT, ES, HU).

To achieve the largest possible impact and exploit the disruptive innovation potential for end users, decision makers, payers and the industry, we will continuously work in close collaboration with our Scientific Advisory Board and relevant stakeholders.

Our Work: Concept Paper

The PECUNIA project is driven by the mission to establish highly needed standardised costing and outcome assessment measures across many EU countries that will help diminishing unnecessary variations in the input cost and (health) outcome data of economic evaluations. As part of our harmonisation approach, our first undertaking is the development of the PECUNIA Concept Paper that brings together a methodological, taxonomical and conceptual framework.

Join our multi-sectoral expert survey

One aim of the PECUNIA project is to gain more insight in the comparability, relevance and importance of specific services and interventions in all investigated sectors for patients with mental health disorders across several EU countries. For this purpose, multi-sectoral national surveys in all PECUNIA countries (AT, DE, ES, HU, NL, UK) among sector-specific experts are conducted in November 2018.

Upcoming Events

11th European Public Health Conference in Ljubljana “Winds of change: towards new ways of improving public health in Europe”, 28 November - 1 December 2018

Following the invitation by the European Commission, Prof. Judit Simon will present PECUNIA in the course of the pre-conference “ARCH - Healing Buildings, Building Healing / Mental health across the life course” on November 28, 2018. Hosted by representatives of the EC Directorate Research and Innovation – Public Health and Neuroscience Sectors, the two sessions intend to trigger of a lively discussion on a future European research agenda on mental health. PECUNIA will be introduced in the session “Research on mental health throughout the life course – EU efforts and future needs”.

Fourteenth Workshop on Costs and Assessment in Psychiatry: The Value of Mental Health Services, 29-31 March 2019

An update of PECUNIA activities and results will be presented at the workshop. We will inform you about details as soon as possible.

HTAi 2019 Annual Meeting

The PECUNIA partners have submitted several abstracts on intersectoral costs and benefits of interventions. More details will be provided once the conference programme is released.

iHEA Basel 2019 Congress: 13th World Congress "New Heights in Health Economics", 13-17 July 2019

In connection with the conference, PECUNIA is organising a satellite workshop, to which the Scientific Advisors and various stakeholders will be invited. The workshop aims at presenting and discussing the project results to experts of different sectors and countries. The event will take place on 17 July 2019, from 1-4pm in Basel.

Latest news from the field

iCARE tool

The iCARE tool estimates missing caregiver costs from patient EQ-5D data. It is based on the study Estimating Informal Caregiving Time from Patient EQ-5D Data: The Informal CARE Effect (iCARE) Tool, in which an algorithm for estimating caregiver time using the EQ-5D scores of patients and their gender was developed. Ultimately, the algorithm allows the inclusion of informal care costs in economic evaluations.

The Paper on the Monetary Value of Informal Care

The recently published paper The Monetary Value of Informal Care: Obtaining Pure Time Valuations Using a Discrete Choice Experiment focuses on the cost-effectiveness of informal care in economic evaluations. The authors investigate willingness-to-accept (WTA) values for an hour of informal care and calculate that the monetary value of one hour of informal care accumulates to almost 15 euros.

Please let us know if you would like to share any interesting news from the field in our next newsletter by contacting Lisa Heinemann.

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If you have any questions regarding the PECUNIA project or suggestions for our newsletter, feel free to get in touch! We are looking forward to receiving your feedback.

Contact

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