Funded by the NIHR as part of a Clinician Scientist personal fellowship award for the CI, Chris Vernazza, the four year project began in June 2015.
The project aims to test two different methodological approaches to eliciting Willingness To Pay (WTP) for healthcare interventions in four questionnaires over two years, developing the more appropriate one into a tool to be used by commissioners. The WTP values obtained from participants will be analysed and used in a resource allocation framework, namely Programme Budgeting Marginal Analysis.
At all stages of the study the economic methods used will be analysed, the study is therefore just as much about how to use economics based tools as whether they work. We have collected some fascinating data on the two approaches and hope to publish these findings very soon.