Jeroen Luyten is this year’s winner of Pfizer’s European HTAcademy scholarship of €40,000

Amsterdam, July 5, 2011 – Jeroen Luyten, a PhD student at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, was selected this year’s winner of the European HTAcademy scholarship by an independent expert committee – in tough competition with Dutch and German national winners. His research project aims to investigate the moral relevance of medical effectiveness and intangible costs for the societal valuation of QALY-gains; dimensions that are so far under-explored within the QALY framework. Mentor for this project is Professor Philippe Beutels of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases at the University of Antwerp.


From left: Clare McGrath, Pfizer, Jeroen Luyten, HTAcademy European Scholarship winner and Professor Maarten J. Postma, Chairman of the European Expert Committee

The HTAcademy aims to promote the further development of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) as an important tool for the systematic evaluation of healthcare technologies by supporting up-and-coming scholars in the HTA field. The European HTAcademy scholarship of €40,000 is awarded once a year for the realization of the winning research proposal. National level winners receive a travel stipend of €5,000–€10,000. The HTAcademy is sponsored by Pfizer Ltd.

Runners-up

Dr. Barbara Buchberger of the University Duisburg-Essen was the winner of the German HTAcademy scholarship 2011/12. Her project proposal entitled “Descriptive and analytic comparison of component systems for the assessment of interventional studies” aims to research quality assessment tools (QAT) used to test the internal validity of single interventional studies. Supporting this work is Professor Jürgen Wasem of the Institute for Health Care Management and Research at the University of Duisberg-Essen.

The Dutch HTAcademy expert committee selected Reina de Kinderen, a PhD student at the University of Maastricht, this year’s national winner. Her research project aims to explore differences between condition-specific and generic instruments for health valuation in epilepsy; hypothesized to be lower due to the non-constant health state of epilepsy patients. Mentor for this project is Dr. Silvia Evers of the University of Maastricht.



HTAcademy national winners: Barbara Buchberger, Reina de Kinderen and Jeroen Luyten

About HTAcademy

Pfizer’s annual HTAcademy scholarship program aims to support graduates at the start of their academic careers who want to contribute to the further development and application of HTA concepts. Eligible candidates may come from, for example, the fields of medicine, health sciences, health economics, psychology or medical ethics. The European scholarship of €40,000 is awarded to the candidate with the most promising research proposal, as selected by an independent expert committee. Eligible candidates for the European scholarship are the national level HTAcademy scholarship winners; each awarded a travel stipend of €5,000 – €10,000. For the cycle 2011/12, applications from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland were accepted. The European expert committee is chaired by Dr. Maarten J. Postma, Professor of Pharmacoeconomics at the University of Groningen.

Further information about the HTAcademy scholarship program and contact details can be found at www.htacademy.eu