New web site for paediatric health economic research

December 05, 2003

OTTAWA — The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute has launched a new web site containing detailed citations from more than 1,000 published paediatric economic evaluations.

The database was developed as part of the Paediatric Economic Database Evaluation (PEDE) Project. Dr. Wendy Ungar, Scientist in Population Health Sciences at the Hospital for Sick Children, started the PEDE project in recognition of the challenges in applying standard health economic methods to children.

Dr. Unger’s research was supported by funding from The Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment and The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute and from in-kind support from the Institute of Health Economics.

Freely accessible and with a user-friendly search engine, the PEDE database is a valuable tool for clinicians interested in a particular condition or treatment, for scientists wishing to examine paediatric health services, and for health economists and policy decision makers desiring to learn more about the economic benefits of particular treatments and services.

The PEDE database is available at http://pede.bioinfo.sickkids.on.ca/pede. It contains over 1,000 citations from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2001 and continues to be updated.

Full details of the PEDE Project are included in a Technology Report published by CCOHTA in 2002 (available on-line at www.ccohta.ca).

CCOHTA is an independent not-for-profit organization that provides unbiased, reliable information about health technologies. CCOHTA delivers a health technology assessment program and the Common Drug Review. CCOHTA is funded by the Canadian federal, provincial and territorial governments.

For more information contact:
Kirk Fergusson: Director, Communications, CCOHTA
kirkf@ccohta.ca