Joan Costa-Font is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at LSE. He teaches political economy, health economics and economic aspects of social policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has previously taught Economics at the University of Barcelona. Dr Costa-Font is a fellow of CESifo (Munich), the health econometrics and data group (York), FEDEA (Madrid), IESE Business School and non-executive director of the Economics of Social Policy Unit (CAEPS) at the University of Barcelona. He has acted as an economic and research consultant for the Word Bank, the European Commission, the Spanish and Catalan governments as well as for private organisations.

Christophe Courbage, is Director of the Health and Ageing and Insurance Economics research programmes at the Geneva Association. He lectures in Health Economics at the University of Lausanne, and "International Faculty" at the Singapore College of Insurance. Dr Courbage is also Deputy Editor of The Geneva Papers and Executive Secretary of the European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists (EGRIE). Dr Courbage was awarded the 1999 Ernst Meyer Prize by the Geneva Association for the best PhD thesis in Insurance Economics, is Deputy Editor of The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, and is Executive Secretary of the European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists (EGRIE).

Professor Alistair McGuire is a Professor in Health Economics at LSE Health and Social Care. He has been professor of Economic at City University and tought at Oxford University and Aberdeen. Professor McGuire has written numerous books, articles and reports in this area. He has also acted as an advisor to numerous UK government offices and research councils (including the ESRC and the MRC), as well as an economic consultant to a number of foreign governments, and domestic and foreign corporations and pharmaceutical companies. His current interests are in economic evaluation (especially when conducted alongside clinical trials), the economics of the hospital, technological diffusion, and health care insurance.

• Part I. Introduction


• 1: Alistair McGuire and Victoria Serra: What do we know about the role of health care technology in driving healthcare expenditure growth?


• Part II. Innovation, diffusion and technology change


• 2: Davide Consoli, Andrew McMeekin, J. Stan Metcalfe, Andrea Mina and Ronnie Ramlogan: The process of innovation: incentives, behaviour and organization


• 3: Nick Bosanquet: Technology - scientific force or power force?


• 4: Victoria Serra-Sastre and Alistair McGuire: Diffusion of health technologies: evidence from the pharmaceutical sector


• Part III. Technological change and health insurance


• 5: Mark Pauly and Adam Isen: Insurance and new health technology


• 6: Peter Zweifel: Technological change and health insurance


• 7: Marin Gemmill, Victoria Serra and Joan Costa-Font: Health insurance and the uptake of new drugs in the United States


• 8: Lilia Filipova and Michael Hoy: Genetic advances and health insurance


• Part IV. Innovation, social demand and valuation


• 9: Roland Eisen and Yasemin Ilgin: Ageing and pharmaceutical innovation


• 10: Manuel García-Goñi and Paul Windrum: New approaches to healthcare innovation: information for chronic patients


• 11: Nicola Pangher: The convergence of nano-, bio- and information technologies in healthcare


• 12: Joshua Graff Zivin, Matthew Neidell, and Lauri Feldman: Treatment uncertainty and irreversibility in medical care: implications for cost-effectiveness analysis


• 13: Adam Oliver and Corinna Sorenson: The limits and challenges to the economic evaluation of health technologies


• Part V. Incentives, mechanisms and processes


• 14: Joan Rovira: Intellectual property rights and pharmaceuticals development


• 15: Frank R. Lichtenberg: Home, or nursing home? The effect of medical innovation on the demand for long-term care


• 16: Joan Costa-Font, Caroline Rudisill and Elias Mossialos: Demand for health information on the internet


• 17: Hristina Petkova: Institutional pathways for integrating genetic testing into mainstream healthcare