Simon Eckermann is Senior Professor of Health Economics at the Australian Health Services Research Institute, Sydney Business School and the University of Wollongong. He was previously Health Economics Professor at the Flinders University Centre for Clinical Change and Health Care Research and Senior Health Economist at the NHMRC Clinical Trial Centre. He  is a CI on competitive research grants totalling more than A$25 million since 2005 and actively sits on and undertakes guideline revision and health economics educational activities for National decision bodies including the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee Economic Sub-Committee (PBAC ESC 2005-2010), National Palliative Care Trials Scientific Committee (2006-2014), Prostheses List Advisory Committee (2012-2014), Victorian Cancer Agency (2015-) and Food Standards ANZ (2017-) as well as various NHMRC grant review committees.

His original research and collaborations have established missing links between optimal decision making in research, reimbursement and regulation in practice and are extensively published in the highest impact health economics and decision making Journals, and clinical and policy journals with his applied research.

Related principles and methods have been taught by Professor Eckermann to more than 500 students from a wide range of clinical, research, policy and health technology assessment backgrounds since 2000, with the ‘Health Economics from Theory to Practice’ course he established with Professor Willan in 2005 consistently rated by participants as the best course of its type internationally.  The Health Economics from theory to Practice text (Eckermann 2017) is recently published by Springer view here and critically for medicinal cannabis policy making addresses the US National Academy of Science call for public health and health economic research. Specifically section 12.5 provides the most comprehensive public health policy evidence synthesis and health economic analysis for optimising Medicinal Cannabis health, economic and environmental impacts in cultivation and provision of medicinal cannabis with precision medicine for optimising net benefit in palliative populations of pain management, the most prevalent indication.  Importantly this highlights the need for good agricultural and manufacturing practice for outdoor and greenhouse cultivated terpene, CBD and THC rich varieties to enable palliative physician optimisation of symptom outcomes but also in meeting key palliative domains for finalising affairs, being in their location community of choice (usually at home) and is within the broader context of chapter 12 policies for optimising budget constrained successful ageing of baby boomer populations. 

More generally methods developed by Professor Eckermann of relevance to health economic analysis of public health questions brought together in the Health Economics from Theory to Practice text, include robust methods for: evidence synthesis and translation (Eckermann, Coory and Willan 2009, 2011); comparison of multiple strategies (Eckermann, Briggs and Willan 2008; Eckermann and Willan 2011); evaluation of health promotion and prevention programs allowing for network multiplier effects (Eckermann et al 2014); evaluating health care efficiency and providers in practice allowing consistent with maximising net benefit in allowing for quality of care (Eckermann and Coelli 2013; Eckermann 2004); multiple domain comparisons, particularly critical to evaluation of areas such as palliative care (McCaffrey et al 2015); optimal research design allowing for relevant policy contexts (Eckermann, Karnon and Willan 2010; Eckermann and Willan 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013; Willan and Eckermann 2010, 2012); optimal adoption, pricing and financing of new technology consistent with the health shadow price (Pekarsky 2012, 2014, Eckermann and Pekarsky 2014) and; optimising current Australian policy reform processes (Eckermann 2014; Eckerman and Sheridan 2016; Eckermann, Sheridan and Ivers 2016).

Recent publications:

Agar M, Lawlor P, Quinn S, Draper B, Caplan BA, Rowett D, Sanderson C, Hardy J, Le B,  Eckermann S, McCaffrey N, Devillee L, Fazekas B, Hill M, Currow DC.  2017. Efficacy of oral Risperidone, Haloperidol or Placebo for symptoms of delirium among patients in palliative care: a randomised trial.  JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Jan 1;177(1):34-42. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.749. First Published online December 5, 2016. 

Eckermann S.  Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319506111

Eckermann S.  Policy Implications and Applications Across Health and Aged Care Reform with Baby Boomer Ageing – from Age and Dementia Friendly Communities to Palliative Care.  Chapter 12 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  The Health Shadow Price and Economically Meaningful Threshold Values.  Chapter 11 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

McCaffrey N , Eckermann S.  Multiple Effects Cost Effectiveness Analysis in Cost-Disutility Space.  Chapter 10 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  Including Quality in Efficiency Measures: Creating Incentives Consistent with Maximising Net Benefit in Practice.  Chapter 9 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  Best Informing Multiple Strategy Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Decision Making: The Cost-Disutility Plane and Expected Net Loss Curves and Frontiers .  Chapter 8 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.   Value of Information, Pricing under Uncertainty and Risk Sharing with Optimal Global Trial Design.  Chapter 7 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  Globally Optimal Societal Decision Maker Trials.  Chapter 6 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  The Value of Value of Information Methods to Decision Making: what VOI Measures enable Optimising Joint Research and Reimbursement Decisions Within a Jurisdiction.  Chapter 5 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S, McCaffrey N.  Beyond the Individual: Evaluating Community-Based Health Promotion and Prevention Strategies and Palliative Care.  Chapter 4 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  Avoiding Frankenstein Monster and Partial Analysis problems: Robustly Synthesising, Translating and Extrapolating Evidence.  Chapter 3 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.

Eckermann S.  Principles and Practice for Trial Based Health Economic Analysis.  Chapter 2 in: Health Economics from Theory to Practice: Optimally Informing Joint Decisions of Research, Reimbursement and Regulation with Health System Budget Constraints and Community Objectives. Cham, Switzerland. Springer. 2017. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50613-5.