Applied Economic Modelling for the Veterinary Sciences (online)

Economic modelling underpins decision-making in the entire field of animal health economics, so a good understanding of the issues and tools involved is vital. The aim of this hands-on course is to enable you to become familiar with using the relevant tools so that you can become more actively involved in economic decision-making, particularly with regard to disease control.

Many economic tools have been developed and are currently being applied to support decisions concerning animal health. These include basic methods such as partial budgeting, cost-benefit analysis and decision analysis, but also more advanced methodologies such as linear programming, the Markov chain and Monte Carlo simulation. You will learn about all of these, together with how to detail the critical steps in a systems analysis and choose appropriate modelling types and techniques.

By gaining greater knowledge of economic concepts and theory during this course, you will be able to contribute in an informed manner to economic decision-making discussions, policy development and implementation.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Analyze economic problems using basic methods such as partial budgeting, cost-benefit analysis and decision analysis
• Detail the critical steps in system analysis and choose appropriate modelling types and techniques
• Describe the use of more advanced methodologies such as linear programming, Markov chains and Monte Carlo simulations
• Describe the uses of social cost-benefit analysis and multi-criteria analysis
• Discuss the importance of animal health economics in decision-making, implementation and evaluation of animal health programs, and in policy development and implementation processes

Our courses are aimed at clinical researchers, nurses, general practitioners, and other health professionals who want to improve their skills in epidemiology, statistics and (clinical) research.

6 weeks, 14 hours per week

Even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. We offer personalized online learning with lots of interaction with peer students, the E-moderator and lecturers. Flexibility from students, a positive attitude towards teachers and peers and the willingness to learn together and help each other is invaluable to our courses. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log on several times per week.

Note that the starting dates of courses, interim deadlines, and dates of exams are fixed, but you can choose when and where you want to watch web lectures and work on assignments. The e-moderator of the course will inform you about the beginning of the course and about deadlines during the course.

The average required study workload for the courses of MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online is 14 hours per week. You will need this time to study, to keep up with the assignments and course material.