Free tweets

As part of their marketing strategy, Springer have tweeted a link to free download of Chapter 1 of our BCEA book. The tweet went out last Friday, but I think there's still time...

HTA R Us

Together with colleagues around the UK, we're organising a workshop on the use of R for statistical modelling in health economic evaluation (broadly speaking, "cost-effectiveness analysis").

It's good that this is exciting news (contributing to taking my mind off all the politics & elections in the world...). But I think this really is exciting news, with a very good line up of speakers/talks. And I really think the objectives of this workshop are very interesting $-$ I think, ultimately, we'll aim at also creating a repository for files/examples/models/templates so that people can start using R for their health economic modelling more and more.

Details below $-$ and Howard tells me the spaces are filling up very quickly...

One-day workshop on R for trial and model-based cost-effectiveness analysis

Venue: G12 in 1-19 Torrington Place, University College London, United Kingdom. https://goo.gl/maps/GJwZAmeozCM2

Date: 11^th July 2018.

Organizer: Howard Thom, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

It is our pleasure to announce a one-day workshop on the use of R for trial and model-based cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). CEA is often done using Excel but, despite its ease of use, Excel incurs the disadvantages of slow computational speed and a lack of transparency; our workshop aims to explore the use of R for CEA as an alternative. A wide range of technical aspects, including a discussion of the many available add-on packages, will be presented to help users get the most out of R for CEA. Presentations and public discussions will address the computational and transparency advantages of R over Excel for CEA and for easing collaboration. Our expert speakers have diverse experience in government (including NICE), academia, and industry. There will also be a contributed oral presentation session and a poster session for which we invite  the submission of abstracts. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.  A preliminary programme is below. 

To register for this free event, please go to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/one-day-workshop-on-r-for-trial-and-model-based-cost-effectiveness-analysis-tickets-43707673829

There is no registration deadline, but places are limited so it is recommended to register soon.

To submit an abstract, please send it to howard.thom@bristol.ac.uk with the subject “R for CEA abstract”. The word limit is 300. Please specific whether the abstract is for oral or poster presentation, or if either is acceptable. Note that only 4 oral presentation slots are available. Abstract submission deadline is 15^th May and the scientific committee will make decisions on acceptance by 1^st June 2018.

If you have any further queries please contact me on howard.thom@bristol.ac.uk

Best wishes,

Howard.

Scientific committee:

Howard Thom. Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

Claire Williams. Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

Nicky Welton. Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

Padraig Dixon. Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

Gianluca Baio. Department of Statistical Science, University College London.

Anthony Hatswell. Delta Hat Analytics, UK; Department of Statistical Science, University College London.

Marta Soares. Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Dyfrig Hughes. Centre for Health Economics & Medicines Evaluation, Bangor University

Chris Jackson. Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge

Boby Mihaylova. Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Public Health, University of Oxford.

Iryna Schlackow. Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Public Health, University of Oxford.

Preliminary Program

9:30-9:45. Howard Thom. Welcome.

9:45-10:15. Gianluca Baio. Department of Statistical Science, University College London.

R you seriously saying we shouldn't use Excel?

This talk will showcase some of the R packages recently developed to aid the work of modellers working in health economic evaluations. The motivation and general philosophy of a few packages will be briefly presented. Examples of their use/advantages over more established, but often non-optimal computational tools, such as MS Excel will be demonstrated.

10:15-11:25. Marta Soares. Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Using R for Markov modelling: an introduction.

This talk introduces the use of R for generic decision modelling detailing some of the advantages and disadvantages of this software package in relation to others commonly used, such as MS Excel. In this talk, I also present generic R code for Markov modelling, probabilistic sensitivity analyses and value of information analyses (using Monte Carlo simulation).

10:25-11:05. Boby Mihaylova and Iryna Schlackow. Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Public Health, University of Oxford.

A policy model of cardiovascular disease in moderate-to-advanced chronic kidney disease

This talk will present the design and structure in R of the SHARP CKD-CVD model, developed using the 5-years follow-up data of 10,000 patients with chronic kidney disease in the SHARP study.  The model projects chronic kidney disease progression and cardiovascular complications and mortality using a set of multivariate risk, cost and QoL equations. We will demonstrate the R Shiny-based model interface to enable use by external analysts and will discuss issues related to model functionality and speed of execution.

11:05-11:20. Coffee

11:20-12:20. Participants oral presentation session (4 speakers, 15 minutes each)

12:20-13:45. Lunch and poster presentations.

13:45-14:00. Dyfrig Hughes. Centre for Health Economics & Medicines Evaluation, Bangor University

Health technology assessors' perspectives on R

This session will present the perspectives of members of NICE evidence review groups, AWMSG secretariat and SMC independent assessors on sponsor submissions using R. The skill requirements, confidence and expertise of these groups in using R will also be discussed.

14:00-14:15. Howard Thom.

Value of information analysis in R.

This session will cover the methods for value of information analysis that can be implemented in R, including linearization, brute force Monte Carlo simulation, parallel computing, meta-modelling, multilevel Monte Carlo and quasi Monte Carlo.

14:15-14:25. Chris Jackson. Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge

Continuous-time multi-state models for disease progression

This session will introduce the theory of modelling disease progression as a continuous-time multi-state process, and how this can be used in cost-effectiveness analysis. R software for continuous-time modelling of various patterns of observed data will be discussed.

14:25-14:45. Claire Williams. Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol.

An overview of a suite of code and functions for CEA in R using continuous-time multi-state modelling

This session will give a brief snapshot of the code already available in a tutorial paper detailing how to carry out Markov and semi-Markov modelling using the continuous-time multi-state modelling survival analysis framework. It will include how to carry out deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analysis and appropriate graphical outputs.

14:45-15:00. Coffee

15:00-15:15. Anthony Hatswell. Delta Hat Analytics, UK; Department of Statistical Science, University College London.

Existing frameworks for collaborative working

This session will outline various ways of working currently used in collaborative efforts in the health economics and connected spheres. The pros and cons of each approach will be outlines, and how the use of R may be promoted under each of the scenarios.

15:15-16:30. Participant discussion.

16:30-16:45. Howard Thom. Close and conclusions.

Job advert

We have a job opening at UCL $-$ this time is in the Institute of Clinical Trials & Methodology and is for a Research Associate in Health Economics. Full details below.

Applications are invited for a Research Associate in Health Economics to join the growing number of health economics researchers at UCL and its partner institutions. The post will join the Health Economics Analysis and Research Methodology Team in the Institute for Clinical Trials and Methodology (ICTM) at UCL, working primarily with the Comprehensive Clinical Trials Unit (CCTU).

The post focuses primarily on economic evaluations and decision modelling alongside randomised controlled trials and provides a unique opportunity for a researcher in health economics who would like training and hands on experience of economic evaluations using trial data. The CCTU has a growing portfolio of large, multi-centre randomised control trials in pharmaceutical, surgical and specialist interventions providing the post holder with experience in the design, conduct and analysis of these trials. As a member of the CCTU you will be involved in the health economic components throughout the lifetime of the trial. Training and support will be provided by your colleagues in the Health Economics Analysis and Research Methodology Team to provide you with the skills you need to confidently undertake your role. The post also provides the opportunity for the successful applicant to pursue their own research interests.

For more information or to apply for this role please go to:

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BIB990/research-associate-in-health-economics

Salary: £34,635 to £41,864

The post is for 1 year in the first instance, but with the potential to extend this.

Closing date for applications: 1 April 2018

Commonwealth Games

Earlier this week, we found out that we have secured the Commonwealth Share Scholarship for our Master Programme in Health Economics & Decision Science.

The Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme is a joint initiative between the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID), and UK universities, to support scholarships for students from developing Commonwealth countries who would not otherwise be able to study in the United Kingdom.

The aim of the scheme is to assist students from developing Commonwealth countries who are of excellent academic calibre but for financial reasons would not otherwise be able to afford to study in the United Kingdom. The scheme allows them to benefit from postgraduate study at a university in the United Kingdom which will help them to contribute toward the development of their home countries.

Applicants must:

• Be a Commonwealth citizen, refugee, or British protected person;
• Be permanently resident in a developing Commonwealth country (for a full list of eligible countries, see the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission terms and conditions;
• Be available to start your academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2018;
• By August 2018, hold a first degree of either first or upper second class (2:1) classification, or lower second class (2:2) classification plus a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree);
• Not have studied or worked for one (academic) year or more in a developed country;
• Be unable, either yourself or through your family, to pay to study in the UK.

More info here.

Acro-juggling

Yesterday, we held our UCL Health Economics Network Symposium. 

Kobi has been poorly since Friday, which of course has coincide with a particularly busy week end/start to the new week... Sunday night was particularly bad and we managed to accomplish a trip to A&E (luckily all is good) and some healthy running around so that someone was at home with him at any given time, while teaching and, in fact, going to the Symposium (the picture to the left shows Marta and I practising our acro-juggling...).

Anyway, despite being low on sleep and rather high on coffee, I managed to talk about our work on Bayesian modelling on missing data in health economic evaluation and our research group in general $-$ Anna and Spyros also presented nice posters about their respective work. Copies of the slides that were presented yesterday are also available here.

I think the event (or to be more precise, what I managed to catch of it) was very interesting and we attracted a varied range of people from within and outside academia, which was really one of the main objectives. And I think the plan is to turn this into an annual event.

501 days of Summer (school)

As I anticipated earlier, we're now ready to open registration for our Summer School in Florence (I was waiting for UCL to set up the registration system and thought it may take much longer than it actually did $-$ so well done UCL!).

We'll probably have a few changes here and there in the timetable $-$ we're thinking of introducing some new topics and I think I'll certainly merge a couple of my intro lectures, to leave some time for those... 

Nothing is fixed yet and we're in the process of deliberating all the changes $-$ but I'll post as soon as we have a clearer plan for the revised timetable.

Here's the advert (which I've sent out to some relevant mailing list, also).

Summer school: Bayesian methods in health economics

Date: 4-8 June 2018

Venue: CISL Study Center, Florence (Italy)

COURSE ORGANISERS: Gianluca Baio, Chris Jackson, Nicky Welton, Mark Strong, Anna Heath

OVERVIEW:

This summer school is intended to provide an introduction to Bayesian analysis and MCMC methods using R and MCMC sampling software (such as OpenBUGS and JAGS), as applied to cost-effectiveness analysis and typical models used in health economic evaluations. We will present a range of modelling strategies for cost-effectiveness analysis as well as recent methodological developments for the analysis of the value of information.

The course is intended for health economists, statisticians, and decision modellers interested in the practice of Bayesian modelling and will be based on a mixture of lectures and computer practicals, although the emphasis will be on examples of applied analysis: software and code to carry out the analyses will be provided. Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops for the practicals.

We shall assume a basic knowledge of standard methods in health economics and some familiarity with a range of probability distributions, regression analysis, Markov models and random-effects meta-analysis. However, statistical concepts are reviewed in the context of applied health economic evaluations in the lectures.

The summer school is hosted in the beautiful complex of the Centro Studi Cisl, overlooking and a short distance from Florence (Italy). The registration fees include full board accommodation in the Centro Studi. 

More information can be found at the summer school webpage. Registration is available from the UCL Store. For more details or enquiries, email Dr Gianluca Baio.

If you've got an issue...

I've just got an email alert to the very last issue of Medical Decision Making, which I found very, very interesting.

I knew of a couple of papers through either reviewing or other means, but I have to say, by looking at titles & abstracts, there's quite a few of interesting reads out there... Will need to find the time to do some proper reading, I think. 

500 days of Summer (school)

We're nearly ready to advertise the 2018 edition of our Florence Summer School on Bayesian Methods in Health Economics (some posts from last year are here and here )! The dates are June 4-8 and we'll hold it again at the CISL Centro Studi.

Last year, I was very pleased with the whole experience and I think people were also very happy, so we're planning to have more fun in a few months. As soon as the UCL store is set up for us to accept registration, we'll go live (and I'll post again).

βCEA

Recently, I've been doing a lot of work on the beta version of BCEA (I was after all born in Agrigento $-$ in the picture to the left $-$, which is a Greek city, so a beta version sounds about right...). 

The new version is only available as a beta-release from our GitHub repository - usual ways to install it are through the devtools package.

There aren't very many changes from the current CRAN version, although the one thing I did change is kind of big. In fact, I've embedded the web-app functionalities within the package. So, it is now possible to launch the web-app from the current R session using the new function BCEAweb. This takes as arguments three inputs: a matrix e containing $S$ simulations for the measures of effectiveness computed for the $T$ interventions; a matrix c containing the simulations for the measures of costs; and a data frame or matrix containing simulations for the model parameters. 

In fact, none of the inputs is required and the user can actually launch an empty web-app, in which the inputs can be uploaded, say, from a spreadsheet (there are in fact other formats available).

I think the web-app facility is not necessary when you've gone through the trouble of actually installing the R package and you're obviously using it from R. But it's helpful, nonetheless, for example in terms of producing some standard output (perhaps even more than the actual package $-$ which I think is more flexible) and of reporting, with the cool facility based on pandoc.

This means there are a few more packages "suggested" on installation and potentially a longer compilation time for the package $-$ but nothing major. The new version is under testing but I may be able to release it on CRAN soon-ish... And there are other cool things we're playing around (the links here give all the details!).

Summer school in Leuven

Emmanuel has organised earlier this year the first edition of the Summer School on Advanced Bayesian Methods, in the beautiful Belgian town of Leuven (which is also where we had our Bayes conference a couple of years ago).

For next year, they have planned the second edition, which will run from 24th to 28th September and I'm thrilled that they have invited me to do the second part on... you guessed it: Bayesian Methods in Health Economic Evaluation.

The programme is really interesting and Mike Daniels will do the first three days on Bayesian Parametric and Nonparametric Methods for Missing Data and Causal Inference. 

24. Nearly.

As the academic year is beginning (our courses will officially start next week), this week has seen the arrival of our new students, including those in our MSc Health Economics & Decision Science (I've talked about this here and here).

When we set out the planning, we were a bit nervous because, while everybody at UCL has been very encouraging and supportive, we were also given a rather hard target $-$ get at least 12 students, or else this is not viable. (I don't think we were actually told what would have happened if we had recruited fewer students. But I don't think we cared to ask $-$ the tone seemed scary enough)...

Well, as it happens, we've effectively doubled the target and we now have 22 students starting on the programme $-$ there may be a couple more additions, but even if they fail to turn up, I think Jolene, Marcos and I will count ourselves very happy! I've spoken to some of the students yesterday and earlier today and they all seem very enthusiastic, which is obviously very good!

Related to this, we'll soon start our new seminar series, to which all the MSc students are "strongly encouraged" to participate. But I'll post more generally in case they may be of interest to a wider audience...

Building the EVSI

Anna and I have just arxived a paper (that we've also submitted to Value in Health), in which we're trying to publicise more widely and in a less technical way the "Moment Matching" method (which we sent to MDM and should be on track and possibly out soon...) to estimate the Expected Value of Sample Information.

The main point of this paper is to showcase the method and highlight its usability $-$ we are also working on computational tools that we'll use to simplify and generalise the analysis. It's an exciting project, I think and luckily we've got our hands on data and designs for some real studies, so we can play around them, which is also nice. I'll post more soon.

Anna has suggested the title of the paper with Bob the builder in mind (so "Can we do it? Yes we can"), although perhaps President Obama (simply "Yes we can") may have worked better. Either way, the picture to the left is just perfect for when we turn this into a presentation...

Planes, trains and automobiles

For some reason, Kobi's favourite thing in the world is flying on an airplane, with making paper airplanes a very closed second and playing airport pretending to check (real) suitcases in and setting off through security as a rather close third.

So it's not surprising that he was quite upset when I told him I would go on an airplane not once, not twice, but three times in the space of just a couple of weeks (in fact, I'll fly to Pisa, then Paris, come back on a train, ride a train again to Brussels and back and finally fly to Bologna and back, all to give talks at several places. From Bologna, I'll actually need to hire a car, because my talk is in nearby Parma). 

I think for a moment Kobi did consider stop loving me. But luckily, I think the crisis has been averted and I got him back on good terms when I told him it's not too long until he can fly again...

Yesterday I was Glasgow to give a talk at the Conference of the Royal Statistical Society in the first leg of my September travels-for-talks. My talk was in a session on missing data in health economic evaluation, with Andrew Briggs and James Carpenter also speaking. I think the session was really interesting and we had a rather good audience, so I was pleased with that.

My talk was basically stealing from Andrea's PhD work $-$ we (this includes also Alexina and Rachael who are co-supervising the project) have been doing some interesting stuff on modelling costs and benefit individual level data accounting for correlation between the outcomes; skeweness in the distributions; and "structural" values (eg spikes at QALY values of 1, which cannot be modelled directly using a Beta distribution).

Andrea has done some very good work also in programming the relevant functions in BUGS/JAGS (and he's having a stub at Stan too) into a beta-version of what we'll be our next package (we have called it missingHE) $-$ I'll say more on this when we have a little more established material ready.

The next trip is to Paris on Monday to give a talk at the Department of Biostatistics, in the Institut Gustav Roussy, where I'll speak about (you guessed it...)  Bayesian methods in health economics. I'll link to my presentation (that is when I'm finished tweaking it...).

A couple of things...

Just a couple of interesting things...


1. Petros sends me this advert for a post as Biostatistician at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto

The Child Health Evaluative Sciences Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto is recruiting a PhD Biostatistician to lead the execution of a CIHR funded clinical trial methodology project, and the planning of upcoming trials with a focus on:

• improving and using methods of Bayesian Decision analysis and Value of Information in pediatric trial design and analysis;
• using patient and caregiver preference elicitation methods (e.g. discrete choice experiments) in pediatrics;
• developing of statistical plan and conducting the statistical analysis for pediatric clinical trials.

The Biostatistician will collaborate with the Principal Investigators (PIs) of four trials that are in the design stage, and with two senior biostatisticians and methodologists within the CHES program. The successful candidate will have protected time for independent methods development. A cross appointment with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto will be sought.

Here’s What You’ll Get To Do:

In collaboration with the trials’ Principal Investigators (PIs), develop the study protocols;

Contribute in the conceptualization and development of decision analytic models;

Contribute in conducting literature reviews and keep current with study literature;

Assist with design/development and implementation of value of information methods;

Contribute to preparation of reports, presentations, and manuscripts.

Here’s What You’ll Need:

Graduate degree in Statistics, Biostatistics, Health Economics or a related discipline;

Ability to function independently yet collaboratively within a team;

Excellent statistical programming skills predominantly using R software; 

Experience with report and manuscript writing;

Effective communication, interpersonal, facilitation and organizational skills;

Meticulous attention to detail.

Employment Type: 

Temporary, Full-Time (3 year contract with possibilities for renewal)

Contacts: Dr. Petros Pechlivanoglou and Dr. Martin Offringa 

2. And Manuel has an advert for a very interesting short course on Missing Data in health economic evaluations (I will do my bit on Bayesian methods to do this, which is also very much related to the talk I'll give at the RSS conference in Glasgow, later in September $-$ this is part of Andrea's PhD work). I'll post more on this later.

Two-day short course: Methods for addressing missing data in health economic evaluation

Dates: 21-22 September, 2017

Venue: University College London

Overview

Missing data are ubiquitous in health economic evaluation. The major concern that arises with missing data is that individuals with missing information tend to be systematically different from those with complete data. As a result, cost-effectiveness inferences based on complete cases are often misleading. These concerns face health economic evaluation based on a single study, and studies that synthesise data from several sources in decision models. While accessible, appropriate methods for addressing the missing data are available in most software packages, their uptake in health economic evaluation has been limited.

Taught by leading experts in missing data methodology, this course offers an in-depth description of both introductory and advanced methods for addressing missing data in economic evaluation. These will include multiple imputation, hierarchical approaches, sensitivity analysis using pattern mixture models and Bayesian methods. The course will introduce the statistical concepts and underlying assumptions of each method, and provide extensive guidance on the application of the methods in practice. Participants will engage in practical sessions illustrating how to implement each technique with user-friendly software (Stata).

At the end of the course, the participants should be able to develop an entire strategy to address missing data in health economic studies, from describing the problem, to choosing an appropriate statistical approach, to conducting sensitivity analysis to standard missing data assumptions, to interpreting the cost-effectiveness results in light of those assumptions.

Who should apply?

The course is aimed at health economists, statisticians, policy advisors or other analysts with an interest in health economic evaluation, who would like to expand their toolbox. It is anticipated that participants will be interested in undertaking or interpreting cost-effectiveness analyses that use patient-level data, either from clinical trials or observational data.

Course fees: £600 (Commercial/Industry); £450 (Public sector); £200 (Students); payable by the 8th September 2017.

To register for the course or for further information, please see here. 

 

When simple becomes complicated...

A while ago, Anna and I published an editorial in Global & Regional Health Technology Assessment. In the paper, we discuss one of my favourite topics $-$ how models for health technology assessment and cost-effectiveness analysis should increasingly move away from using spreadsheet (basically, Excel) and towards proper statistical software.

The main arguments that historically have been used to support spreadsheet-based modelling are those of "simplicity and transparency" $-$ which really grinds my gears. In the paper we also argue that, may be, as statisticians we should invest in efforts towards designing our models using user-interfaces, or GUIs $-$ the obvious example is web-apps. This would expand and extend work done, eg in SAVI, or BCEAweb or bmetaweb, just to name a few (that I'm more familiar with...). 

Picky people (2)

I've complained here about the fonts for some parts of the computer code in our book . Eva (our publisher) has picked up on this and has been brilliant and very quick in trying to fix the issue. I think they will update the fonts so that at least on the ebooks version all will look nice!

Conflict of interest

I am fully aware that this post is seriously affected by a conflict of interest, because what I'm about to discuss (in positive terms!) is work by Anthony, who's doing a very good job on his PhD (which I co-supervise).

But, I thought I'd do like our former PM (BTW: see this; I really liked the series) and sort conflict of interests by effectively ignoring them (to be fair, this seems to be a popular strategy, so let's not be too harsh on Silvio...).

Anyway, Anthony has written an editorial, which has received some traction in the mainstream media (for example here, here or here). Not much that I disagree with in Anthony's piece, except that I am really sceptical of any bake & eat situation $-$ the only exception is when I actually make pizza from scratch...

Picky people

Our book on Bayesian cost-effectiveness analysis using BCEA is out (I think as of last week). This has been a long process (I've talked about this here, here and here). 

Today I've come back to the office and have open the package with my copies. The book looks nice $-$ I am only a bit disappointed about a couple of formatting things, specifically the way in which computer code got badly formatted in chapter 4. 
We had originally used specific font, but for some reason in that chapter all computer code is formatted in Times New Romans. I think we did check in the proofs and I don't recall seeing this (which, to be fair, isn't necessarily to swear that we didn't miss it, while checking...).

Not a biggie. But it bothers me, a bit. Well, OK: a lot. But then again, I am a(n annoyingly) picky person...

Homecoming (of sort...)

I spent last week in Florence for our Summer School. Of course, it was home-coming for me and I really enjoyed being back to Florence $-$ although it was really hot. I would say I'm not used to that level of heat anymore, if it wasn't for the fact that I have caught my brother (who still lives there) huffing and complaining about it several times!...

I think it was a very good week $-$ we had capped the number of participants at 27; everybody showed up and I think had a good time. I think I can speak for myself as well as for Chris, Nicky, Mark and Anna and say that we certainly enjoyed being around people who were so committed and interested! We did joke at several points that we didn't even have to ask the questions $-$ they were starting the discussion almost without us prompting it...

The location was also very good and helped make sure everybody was enjoying it. The Centro Studi in Fiesole is an amazing place $-$ not too close to Florence that people always disappears after the lectures, but not too far either. So there was always somebody there even for dinner and a chat in the beautiful garden, although some people would venture down the hill (notably, many did so by walking!). We also went to Florence a couple of times (the picture is one of my favourite spots of the city, which I obviously brought everybody to...).

Post-doc

If you fancy becoming like the crazy, purple minion, we have a Research Associated position at the UCL Institute for Global Health (with whom I've been heavily involved in the past year or so, while organising our new MSc Health Economics & Decision Science). 

All the relevant details and the link to the application form are available here. The deadline is 13 May.