Health Systems and Service Research

HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT. This strand concerns the application and adaptation of methods and tools for the effective management of complex organizations to the context of health services but also the development of innovative and specific ways for the governance of health organizations. In this strand, research concerning planning, operational programming and management control, the construction of organizational models, the selection and management of personnel, the forms of leadership and management of health organizations will be declined in the perspective of an integrated, clinical and economic governance of the processes of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.

Health Economics. This line of research includes the lines of research dedicated to the exploration of the ways of allocating economic resources for the promotion and restoration of health in the macro aspects. This includes studies on how health systems are financed from a public and private perspective, insurance dynamics and reflections that include equitable aspects of resource allocation. The perspective of these studies is both macro and micro-economic. 

Economic evaluations of health programs. The track is dedicated to the development and application of innovative methodologies for the comparative evaluation of the effectiveness/usefulness and costs of health programmes (broadly understood technologies, public health programmes, etc.). Such methods are developed to provide decision-makers with elements for a correct allocation of resources between alternative modes of allocation. Alongside traditional impact analysis models (e.g. budget impact models), this course explores the different models for carrying out comparative analyses such as Markow chains or DICE models.

HTA (Health Technology Assessment). This track is dedicated to the development and application of models for the analysis of the impact of the implementation of health technologies broadly understood in a multidimensional, multidisciplinary and multistakeholder logic created to support decision-makers at different levels of the system (clinicians, management, policy makers). With respect to the "disciplinary" and technical aspects, the researcher who intends to develop a competence in HTA will be called upon to deepen the institutional aspects that guarantee the impact of HTA activities on decisions in health systems and therefore the role of scientific evidence in guiding decisions.

Big Data Analytics for Healthcare Service and Systems Management. This is the most quantitative address of the entire course and links the epidemiological and public health skills with the quantitative ones, available within the teaching staff. In this area, the research path concerns the development and application of statistical analysis models applied to large administrative and clinical databases to develop increasingly sophisticated and accurate approaches to the management of health systems at macro, meso and micro levels. In this context, methodologies and approaches are developed for the analysis of "real world" data, both of a clinical and economic nature, to support the correct assessment of health technologies and drugs in particular.

Global Health. This course develops a paradigm for the study of public health issues that unravels from a holistic concept of health. Global Health pays particular attention to the analysis of the state of health and the real needs of the world population, and to the influences that socio-economic, political, demographic, legal and environmental determinants exert on them, explaining the interconnections between globalization and health in terms of equity, human rights, sustainability, diplomacy and international collaborations. This field of study, therefore, is necessarily multidisciplinary while being rooted in the tradition of public health.

Health Legislation. This track is dedicated to the study of the institutional arrangements and legal constraints that characterize medical activities and health organizations. If health is characterized by being a sector crossed by a constant and rapid regulatory and jurisprudential evolution, health law represents one of the new sectors of legal science that is assuming increasing autonomy on the epistemological level. We are witnessing the elaboration of an autonomous scientific statute and precisely with regard to both the method of investigation (interaction with clinical/medical and economic disciplines) and the object of study (human health in relation to different life contexts). Research in health law is also necessary to address the analysis of the behavioral, clinical and organizational repercussions deriving from legal problems and regulatory constraints. In addition, health law studies contribute to strengthening the connection of national health systems with the experiences of other states in a comparative key and to grasping the European and international scope of health phenomena.