History

The Institute was established in 2005 by a group of scientists with medical, health economic, and econometric backgrounds, as well as hands-on management experience to analyze the economic dimension of health and health care, including research into the normative foundations and the methods of health economics, applied cost of illness and cost benefit studies, and their use in Health Technology Assessment (HTA).

Today, the Institute and its projects are overseen by three of its founders, a scientific core team and independent partner organizations (see our Team).

The Institute's first major project was the health economic analysis of clinically proven treatment strategies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based upon the Multimodal Treatment of ADHD (MTA) Study, initiated by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland. While the Institute’s activities have retained a certain focus on the economics of mental health disorders, the range of subjects studied has been growing continuously.

Over the years, the major areas of interest have extend beyond traditional cost effectiveness and cost benefit analyses, encompassing both the normative foundations and the methods of health economic evaluations, HTAs in theory and practice, health care utilization and cost studies (including budget impact analyses), as well as the identification, demonstration, measurement and communication of the clinical and economic value of “health technologies”, including the related issues of market access, pricing and reimbursement (for example, for diagnostics, medical devices, pharmaceutical products, and likewise institutional arrangements and processes of health care delivery). Finally, field of growing interest and relevance have been also health economic studies adopting the perspectives of patients and citizens (health-related quality of life, patient-reported outcomes, and socioeconomic impact research; social cost value analysis).

From its inception, the Institute has been associated with the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Economic Sciences, through a formal cooperation agreement.