INFRASTRUCTURE. Professor Mikael Svensson, the new Head of the Health Metrics Unit at Sahlgrenska Academy, wants to put Gothenburg on the map for applied health economics and health science statistics research. In addition, the unit has now received renewed financing for Academy Statistic’s cost-free consultation service.
Mikael Svensson is the newly appointed Professor in Applied Health Economics with a focus on register-based studies. He is taking over the position as Head of the Health Metrics Unit that coordinates and executes education in health science statistics and health economics at Sahlgrenska Academy.
“Together with other actors at the University and in the region, we plan to make Gothenburg a new Northern European hub for applied health economics and health science statistics research and education. We plan to continue to extend our educational offerings to students, graduate students and researchers as well as to a wider audience in the private and public sectors,” says Mikael Svensson.
This fall, the unit will recruit a new post-graduate and assistant researcher in health economics. This spring, the first graduate course in health economic evaluation methods will be given at Sahlgrenska Academy.
“This course will occur regularly and be complemented with different themed advanced courses in applied health economics,” says Mikael Svensson, whose unit will also provide summer school in 2016 with courses in health economics and health science statistics aimed at graduate students, researchers and practitioners in the public and private sectors.
Mikael Svensson succeeds Max Petzold, who, for the next three years, will assume Directorship of the Swedish National Data Service (SND) www.snd.gu.se. This is an infrastructure under the President, with financing from Swedish Research Council:
“It feels great to have Mikael take over as Unit Head so that the health economics part of the activities can grow and enable us to build a truly strong Health Metric Unit in the region,” says Max Petzold, who has been responsible for building up health metric activities over the past four years.
Max Petzold remains the Head of the Department for the Health Science Statistics at Sahlgrenska Academy. The work at SND will, to a large part, be concerned with increasing national access to research data per the Research Council’s policy of Open Access. As a member of one of Wellcome Trust’s grant committees, he has received excellent insight into how major research financiers in England work for open access by putting demands on granted research funding.
“In all likelihood, this will happen more often even in Sweden, which is where the Swedish National Data Service will play a central role in helping the University to create this access via the research library and archives,” says Max Petzold.
Recently, the Unit for Health Metrics was granted renewed funding from Bioinformatics for the cost-free consultation service unit that goes under the name of Academy Statistics. There, researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, Sahlgrenska University Hospital and Region Västra Götaland, in general, can receive four free-of-charge consultation hours with a qualified statistician, even under 2016. Please feel free to contact us at akademistatistik@gu.se to book a time.
