As a researcher you may be involved in: collecting and analysing cost and quality-of-life data for clinical trials; studying physician and patient decision making; conducting an economic evaluation of a public health program or conducting health services research into, for example, the ethics of managed care.
A number of new and interesting areas of research have recently emerged including the economic and policy implications of recent advances in genetics, genomics and gene therapy.
Health economics researcher, a health economics research centre at a NSW based University
Patrick has obtained a Bachelor of Economics, Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Economics all from Macquarie University and to date has divided his career between research and policy.
He started in health as a graduate officer with the then Commonwealth Department of Health and Human Services. A few years later he joined a NSW State government department’s Economics Training Program - a three year program consisting of one-year fulltime education and two years of work placement within the NSW health system. During this time, Patrick participated in a new priority program - the Telemedicine Initiative where he worked on a variety of projects related to telehealth funding.
Patrick now works at a health economic s research centre in NSW based University and has worked on a variety of research projects including an economic evaluation of hospital-in-the-home, the Australian health care workforce and the economics of public health interventions. He is currently working on the cost and outcomes of a randomised control trial of positron emission tomography, cancer funding and the Medicare Safety Net. His main research interests are economic evaluation of health care interventions and programs.
Patrick has also worked for a NGO in Paris where his research focus was an international comparison of the use of economic evidence in resource allocation decisions.