The role of the NCPE, the HTA process and European collaborations Dr Caroline Walsh, SPHeRE cohort 2016-2020 Health Technology Assessor, National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE)   Health Technology Assessment (HTA) involves the assessment of evidence of comparative effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness and potential budget impact of health technologies for use by […]

The benefits of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) are widely appreciated; well conducted HTAs facilitate patient access to cost-effective technologies that can improve health outcomes, minimise the introduction of ineffective technologies, and contribute to value for money decisions in the context of limited healthcare resources. However, the HTA process does not […]

The study of infectious disease represents a complex, multi-disciplinary, data-driven pursuit to better understand the patterns and drivers of these infections. In recent years, the role of the natural environment and socio-dynamics have added another lens through which to elucidate the epidemiology of disease. In the Republic of Ireland, diverse […]

Air pollution is by far the most serious public health problem caused by environmental factors[1] and causes over 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year.[2] Although air quality in Ireland is mostly good, winter evenings are an exception. At these times, air quality deteriorates sharply as burning of solid fuels […]

On the 12th of March on a bright Thursday afternoon, An RCSI e-mail was circulated telling us to ‘Pack up and go home’. As I zipped up my bag with my laptop, some journal articles, and books, I said goodbye to my office colleagues, ‘See you in two weeks – […]

When COVID-19 struck in early 2020 attention quickly turned to the impact the pandemic was having on excess mortality. Excess mortality is a very useful way to measure the total mortality impact of the epidemic. This is because it accounts for the fact that some of the people who died from COVID-19 […]

I began my PhD at the School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, in Dublin City University in 2015. Prior to that, I had worked as a research assistant in the Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation (CGR) in University College Cork since 2013, across a number of dementia-focused research projects […]

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in a wide range of risk factors for suicidal behaviour. The range includes the sudden loss of loved ones, anxiety and fear of infection, job loss and economic uncertainty, social isolation and loneliness, restrictions on healthy activities and on access to health […]

If you asked me five years ago what I wanted to do when I qualified as a Pharmacist, I would have said “a PhD”. Now five years later, having completed a Bachelors and Masters of Pharmacy, here I am doing just that. My PhD journey is beginning. The hard work […]

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 has rapidly spread around the world, causing a substantial number of cases and deaths globally. The COVID-19 pandemic requires making rapid decisions based on sparse and rapidly emerging evidence. There has been a proliferation of scientific output in basic science, clinical medicine and public […]