Course curriculum

Delegates will learn how to build cost-effectiveness models as custom R packages, incorporating unit-testing, documentation and dissemination via GitHub and CRAN.

    1. Welcome

    2. Course overview

      FREE PREVIEW

    3. Before we begin...

    4. Coursebook

    5. Code download

    1. Section Overview

    2. Lesson 1: Why package a health economic model?

    3. Lesson 2: Examples of Packages in Health Economics

    1. Section Overview

    2. Lesson 1: Package Structure and Development Workflow

    3. Lesson 2: Creating the Package Skeleton

    4. Lesson 3: Initializing Version Control

    5. Lesson 4: Initializing & Connecting to a Remote Repository

    6. Exercises & Solutions - Package Skeleton

    1. *Optional Recap: Introduction to Functions in R

    2. Lesson 1: Implementing Your First Function

    3. Exercises & Solutions - Functions

    4. Exercises & Solutions - Adding Functions to Your Package

    5. Lesson 2: Function Documentation

    6. Exercises & Solutions - Function Documentation 1

    7. Lesson 3: Documenting Your First Function

    8. Exercises & Solutions - Function Documentation 2

    1. Section Overview

    2. Lesson 1: Unit Tests

    3. Exercises & Solutions - Unit Tests 1

    4. Lesson 2: Unit Tests & Tests Code Coverage

    5. Exercises & Solutions - Unit Tests 2

    6. Lesson 3: Package Dependencies

    7. Lesson 4: Including Data in Your Package

    8. Exercises & Solutions - Bundling Data 1

    9. Exercises & Solutions - Bundling Data 2

    10. Lesson 5: Vignettes: Narrative Documentation

    11. Exercises & Solutions - Authoring Vignettes

    1. Section Overview

    2. Lesson 1: Build & Check Workflow

    3. Lesson 2: Licensing and Metadata: The DESCRIPTION File

    4. Lesson 3: Installation & Distribution

About this course

  • 7 hours of video content
  • Online Coursebook
  • Extensive Code Repository
  • Discussion Board

What's included

Follow at your own pace, with extensive course materials, code demos and exercises.

  • Online coursebook with code chunks, descriptions of methods and with exercises & solutions

  • Recorded presentations covering the key concepts, and with step by step code walkthroughs

  • Code repository containing all code from the demonstrations, exercises and solutions

  • Discussion forum providing a chance to ask questions about any of the materials

Instructors

Wael Mohammed, PhD

Dark Peak Analytics | University of Sheffield

Wael has a background in pharmacy and public health. He is an expert in decision-analytic modelling, econometrics, and data science (especially in R). He has a PhD in calibration methods for health economic evaluation from the University of Sheffield. He has previously held positions at, NICE, the Department for Health and Social Care and the University of Sheffield.

Robert Smith, PhD

Dark Peak Analytics | University of Sheffield

Rob is an expert in the use of R for health economic modelling. He has previously worked at the UK Joint Biosecurity Centre, the UK Health Security Agency, the World Health Organization and The University of Sheffield. He has consulted for a wide range of organisations including top 10 pharmaceutical companies, national health ministries and HTA bodies. He is a keen proponent of the use of R for HTA; serving as co-director of the international R-HTA consortium and the World Health Organisation’s Health Economic Assessment Tool Expert Advisory Group.

Dr Paul Schneider, PhD

Dark Peak Analytics

Paul is an expert in the development of software for HEOR. A medical doctor and epidemiologist by training, he has used R on various research projects, ranging from the modelling costs of breast cancer, and value of information analyses, to the monitoring of influenza in real-time using online data. He is a keen advocate of open science practices and has published several open-source papers with Rob on the use of shiny and R for health economic evaluation.

Testimonials

“This course was the best training I’ve attended. It covered many areas essential to understanding the content, including how to structure your model, vectorization, a variety of needed commands and their efficiency, creating custom functions, combining functions to create a model, plotting data, and so much more.”

Aaron Winn, Associate Professor, University of Illinois

“This course is a great resource for creating interactive decision models using R and shiny. It offered the team a great mix of presentations and hands-on exercises, with clear code walkthroughs that are perfect for both beginners and experienced modelers.”

Professor Ed Wilson, PenTAG (University of Exeter)

“The R Shiny course was really useful for our team and catered well for attendees at all skill levels. We all left considerably more confident about building Shiny applications for decision models in R. Having the codebase and coursebook to keep after the course was invaluable as this allowed us to continue to build on the skills we learnt on the day.”

Dawn Lee, Associate Professor, PenTAG, University of Exeter

“The course was great! The slides and explanations were clear. The exercises with solutions were really helpful, and loads of example code were made available. Having access to the recordings and the online book made the whole learning experience easier. ”

Dr Rami Cosulich, Research Associate, University of Sheffield

“This course provides an excellent playground with a variety of hands-on R material to experimentally improve my/your health economic modelling in R (Shiny).”

Sietse van Mossel, University of Twente

“An excellent course on building health economic models in R + a Shiny interface with many examples and expert instructors. I appreciated the personalized support received during the code clinics. This course suitable for Intermediate or Advanced R users.”

Ayman Sadek, Senior Research Associate, University of Bristol

“The main tutor Rob was an excellent teacher, very knowledgeable and explains things very clearly at a good pace. The course material and resources were also excellent. I would thoroughly recommend and endorse this course.”

Dr Louise Linsell, Principal statistician Visible Analytics

“The Dark Peak Analytics team is second to none. Very helpful, insightful, and friendly. Would highly recommend to anyone wanting to advance their HEOR skillsets in R. ”

Michael Kim, Takeda/UIC

“Really enjoyable course with clear information that is directly applicable to anyone learning R no matter what level. Really enjoyed how open the instructors were to questions. The materials were easily accessed and easy to follow ”

Matthew Keane, Health Economist, Novartis/University of Nottingham

“This microsimulation in R is really well structured and informative course. Especially, they provide you a bunch of codes that you can run on your own program. I definitely recommend this course to those who are interested in applying this knowledge to their study. ”

Sodam Kim, University of Illinois

Join us today

  • £695.00

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  • £395.00

    Non-commercial (Content Only)

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FAQ

  • How long will I have access to course materials for?

    For 12 months. Some of our materials are also downloadable, so you can still refer to them after that period.

  • When are the course materials made available?

    Course materials are provided one month prior to the first code clinic, allowing plenty of time to access the materials prior to the live sessions.

  • What software do I need on my computer?

    To run the code provided, we recommend delegates have R Version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22) or newer, and RStudio (https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/)

  • I want something more bespoke, do you teach other courses?

    Yes, we teach bespoke courses on a range of other topics in addition to teaching these topics in live sessions within Industry, Universities and Government.

  • Will I get an invoice?

    Yes, you'll receive an invoice by email after booking.

  • Can I send questions via email if I can't attend a code clinic?

    Yes, we will respond to questions sent via email or on the dedicated discussions board of the course platform.

  • Do you provide discounts for LMIC?

    Yes, we offer a discount for those booking from a LMIC. Please use the discount code: lmic50 for a 50% discount on the content only version of the course.

  • What kinds of questions can I ask in the code clinic?

    Anything you like. We will prioritise questions about the course materials, but feel free to bring any other challenges you are facing (related to R or Health Economics).

  • Can I book for a large group? Do you offer discounts for large groups?

    It is possible to book for others using a 'gift' purchase. We do offer discounts for large group bookings, please contact us to get a booking link.