Adding Quality Years to Later Life via Innovative Health Economics Research Methods

My career goal is to improve the health and quality of life of older Canadians through applying innovative health economic methods to lifestyle interventions among older adults at risk of falls as well as cognitive and functional decline. I propose a multi-disciplinary research program that advances health economic methods for clinical research studies.

Theme 1 of my research program will advance health economic evaluation methodology by answering the question: “Can artificial intelligence combat current methods limitations of economic evaluation?”

Theme 2 will utilize patient outcomes assessed by patients to explore how patient perspectives may optimize adherence to lifestyle interventions to promote quality of life and maintenance of functional dependence. Hence, I plan to advance methods for clinically applied economic evaluation and explore the utility of patient reported outcome measures to efficiently improve health related quality of life.

These methods advancements will provide a new prototypes useful for

1. clinical trials with concurrent economic evaluations and
2. patient reported outcome measures that promote adherence and resultantly, health related quality of life — ultimately helping older adults “age in place”.