There is general consensus that individual research projects generated by the GAPRUKI collaborative group should incorporate economic considerations at the design stage where this is merited. Potential economic contributions towards the work of GAPRUKI include analysis of trends in resources for paediatric care, economic evaluations of aspects of paediatric care, exploration of the relationship between the ways health services for children are organised and economic outcomes, and methodological research on economic aspects of child health and health care.

A health economist should be invited to collaborate at an early stage of the development of new research proposals where this is merited. Where relevant, health economics input should be provided at each stage of GAPRUKI sponsored studies, including their design, conduct, analysis and reporting.

Professor Stavros Petrou (s.petrou@warwick.ac.uk), one of the members of GAPRUKI, has kindly agreed to act as our Health Economics Advisor.

Some initial areas for research where economic considerations might form the focal point include:

(i)            Studies of bronchiolitis where the clinical and economic burden is considerable and where new drugs in the pipeline await evaluation;
(ii)          Studies of the economic outcomes of children with complex needs who tend to be under-represented in randomised controlled trials;
(iii)         Development of individual-level observational datasets that incorporate relevant economic variables and permit estimation of economic outcomes associated with clinical events of interest to clinical and policy decision-makers;
(iv)         Linkage of clinical datasets to HES and CPRD data. These observational datasets might form a basis for exploring the relationship between organisational and individual-level variables and long-term clinical and economic outcomes;
(v)          Primary data collection through GAPRUKI could provide a basis for methodological research, e.g. development of new methods for utility measurement in childhood, development of trials methodology, etc.