Simon Eckermann is Professor in Health Economics at the Flinders Centre for Clinical Change & Health Care Research, Flinders University. He has extensive experience in teaching and applying decision analytic methods for economic analysis in Health Technology Assessment and currently sits on the Economic Sub-Committee of the PBAC. His original research includes methods for: (i) using value of information for optimal research design and decision making in HTA accounting for decision context (adopt, delay) time, costs of reversal and opportunity costs of delay; and (ii) a correspondence method allowing ratio measures of relative efficiency consistent with maximizing net benefit.

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Julie Ratcliffe has recently been appointed as Associate Professor in Health Economics within Flinders Clinical Effectiveness, Flinders University.

Julie has extensive experience in health economics research and teaching and has held research grants from a number of sources, including the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council in Australia and the Department of Health and the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. Julie has worked on a large number of research collaborations with economists, clinicians, nurses and health service researchers. Her research interests include the measurement and valuation of health outcomes for economic evaluation, the economic evaluation of new and emerging health care technologies and patient and general population preferences for health and health care services.

Julie recently co-authored a book on the measurement and valuation of health outcomes for economic evaluation: Brazier J, Ratcliffe J, Salomon J, Tsuchiya A. Measuring and Valuing Health Benefits for Economic Evaluation commissioned and published by Oxford University Press in 2007.

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Nikki McCaffrey is a health economist with Flinders Centre for Clinical Change & Health Care Research at Flinders University in Adelaide and has a strong background in pharmaceutical evaluation and health technology assessment.

Nikki’s early career as a pharmacist in the UK includes the provision of: community pharmaceutical services; guidance on the evidence-based cost-effective use of medicines to over 40 general practitioners and allied professionals; expertise in health economic models and evaluations to promote branded pharmaceutical products for the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer; project management skills to implement the heart failure and revascularisation standards in the National Services Framework for Coronary Heart Disease; and adult learning training workshops to hundreds of health care professionals within the National Health Service.

Since moving to Australia in 2004 she has worked for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) evaluating submissions by the pharmaceutical industry seeking reimbursement for pharmaceuticals through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, until commencing her candidature with Flinders University in July 2008.

Nikki has qualifications in clinical pharmacy, prescribing sciences, epidemiology, health economics and health policy. She is currently undertaking a doctoral thesis in economic evaluation of interventions in palliative care and expects to complete her thesis in 2011. She has conducted and published qualitative and quantitative research into: the clinical and statistical rationale for non-inferiority margins in randomised controlled trials; media presentation of PBAC decisions; and health beliefs associated with medication concordance in heart failure patients.

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