HELPPFL
Health-economic evaluations of prevention policies in Flanders.
This research project consists of developing and elaborating on health economic evaluations focusing on universal preventative health strategies. Specific (prevention) strategies are evaluated for their impact and cost-effectiveness to support the policy decisions for the Flemish Government.
Contact persons of the project: Max Lelie & Bo Vandenbulcke
SmartQi
The societal benefit of markerless stereotactic body radiotherapy-project allows a collaboration between various research domains, such as radiotherapy, radiology, biostatistics and health economics. Primarily, the focus will be set on new and improved approaches in radiotherapeutic treatment.
The role of I-CHER in this project is to foster value-based health care and researching the impact on hospitals and society in general. Within this project, a Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) approach based on the model of Kaplan and Anderson will be applied in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the cost of care delivery and cost control. Furthermore, a socio-economic evaluation will be executed, accounting for the costs and benefits for health service providers as well as an analysis where the societal perspective is adopted.
Contact persons of the project: Eva Kimpe & Sara-Lise Busschaert
HeaRTWise
HeaRTWise (Health Economic Analysis of Return To Work and societal cost of cardiovascular diseases) -project aims to improve accuracy of patient-specific prognoses for occupational outcomes following Cardiovasular diseases (CVDs).
Contact person of the project: Ellen Tisseghem
HEALTH PFAS
Health Economic Analysis and Long Term impact on Humans of PFAS, a Flemish Assessment Study
In recent years, extensive research has been conducted on the health effects of PFAS contamination. Our research aims to assess the health impact caused by PFAS in Flanders and calculate the associated direct and indirect costs.
The study consists of three components, with I-CHER focusing on the second component. Firstly, a risk assessment is conducted regarding the environmental health attention area. Using dose-response relationships, a risk assessment is performed for a number of predefined health endpoints. The second component involves conducting cost-of-illness studies and attributable budget impact assessments. Finally, a legal analysis is conducted to explore reimbursable alternatives.
Contact person of the project: Zoë Vandamme
BRILIANT
The BRILIANT project uses big data to address the lack of research on pediatric traumatic brain injury due to small sample sizes. It aims to describe brain-injured children using epidemiological data, model care trajectories, and predict outcomes based on patient characteristics. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, it identifies barriers to care access and suggests health policy improvements.
Contact person of the project: Viktor-Jan De Deken
PIANISSIMO
Pianissimo is a three-arm multicenter randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether a pain medication tapering program before spinal cord stimulation (SCS) implantation is more effective in reducing disability after 12 months in patients with Persistent Spinal Pain Syndrome Type II who are scheduled for SCS implantation compared with usual care.
Contact person of the project: Frenn Bultinck
Opera
Current post-operative interventions are seemingly not effective to achieve return to work after Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) implantation for patients suffering from therapy-refractory persistent spinal pain syndrome type II (PSPS-T2). Despite evidence that SCS can improve RTW, only 9.5 to 14% of patients implanted with SCS are make a successful return to work. This is where the OPERA trial finds it's objective: to examine whether a personalised biopsychosocial rehabilitation programme specifically targeting RTW alters the work ability in PSPS-T2 patients after SCS implantation compared to usual care. More details on the trial can be found at: https://stimulus.research.vub.be/en/opera
Contact persons of the project: Jonas Callens
AHA Boost
This project investigates whether an additional arm-hand intervention (AHA boost) can improve long-term arm-hand activity and quality of life in hospitalized stroke patients compared to a dose-equivalent treatment. The I-CHER researchers contribute to the implementation of the clinical trial and focus on the health economic aspects and process evaluation of this new approach in everyday practice.
Contact person for this project: Lisa Cruycke
REKOVER
The REKOVER-project focused on the registration and societal costs of traffic accidents. The project was carried out at I-CHER in cooperation with the Belgian Road Safety Institute (BRSI). The aim of I-CHER in the project was to investigate the societal cost of injuries obtained from a road traffic injury and to focus on health service use after a road traffic injury.
OptiBIRTH
Health economic evaluation of the European 'OptiBIRTH' project was an innovative programme to increase VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean section) using evidence based prenatal strategies, including a health economic evaluation, international comparisons of health related quality of life, healthcare utilisation, and perinatal care in general. (7th Framework programme www.optibirth.eu) (partners: Trinity College Dublin, University of Gothenburg, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, University of Ulster, Queen's University Belfast, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, National University of Ireland Galway, Università degli Studi di Genova, Wetenschappelijk Fonds Willy Gepts UZ Brussel - VUB).
B2aSic
The B2aSic project was a randomized controlled trial investigating perioperative back school and brain school (pain neuroscience education) in patients undergoing surgergy for lumbar radiculopathy. Main outcome measures were pain and endogeneous pain inhibition. Secondary outcomes compromised healthcare utilization and related costs, return to work, surgical experience and pain cognitions. I-CHER was involved to provide an overview of inpatient healthcare utilization and costs of patients undergoing surgery. Additionally, I-CHER researcher investigated treatment effects on healthcare expenditure and return to work and the influence of pain cognitions on these parameters. This project was funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) - Applied Biomedical Research Program (TBM), Belgium.
Cancer Screening
Health economic evaluation of screening programmes of breast-, colorectal- and cervical cancer including a systematic review and health economic modelling of screening programmes. (Flemish Agency for Care and Health, Partner:UGent)
OPTIMUS
Our mission was to generate new knowledge that leads to the optimization of stroke care in the most cost-effective way. OPTIMUS focused on three main pillars of fundamental research: (1) develop new diagnostic and therapeutic methods for pre-and in-hospital acute stroke care, (2) develop new approaches to enhance patient empowerment and medication safety in secondary prevention and (3) develop accurate models to predict stroke outcome. Additionally, (4) objective quantification of the added value of the novel diagnostic (1), therapeutic (1 and 2) and prognostic (3) approaches incorporated in OPTIMUS were obtained using health economic evaluation and Comparative Effectiveness Research analyses of novel care trajectories after stroke.
REBRAIN
The REBRAIN project aims to make accurate predictions about the probability of different employment outcomes, one year after traumatic brain injury. As prospective data collection is very resource intensive, it should be assessed whether routinely collected data can be used for the creation of personalized predictions. This project applies recent data science techniques to create a prediction model using big data on hospital stay, healthcare utilization and employment, which are linked at an individual level. Additional data collection with an extended item set enables the evaluation of the added value of prospective data as opposed to routinely collected data. The predictions resulting from this research can be applied to inform patients, but also clinicians and policymakers on how to optimize current practices regarding the trajectory towards reinstatement. REBRAIN is funded by the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) and the Fund BENEVERMEDEX (managed by the King Baudouin Foundation).