Modelling infectious diseases and health economics

Mathematical models are increasingly used to study infectious disease transmission, simulate reactive strategies and inform policy. In this course we focus on dynamic or time-dependent models representing the transmission of evolutionary systems. We start with basic concepts of transmission models for infectious diseases and continue with parameter estimation and social contact patterns. The level of model complexity increases from deterministic compartmental models up to stochastic individual-based models and we provide hands-on tutorials in R.

Health interventions are assessed with respect to both effects and costs in health economic evaluations or health technology assessments. The objective is to optimize health outcomes for a constrained health budget. We elaborate in this course on cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses for infectious disease interventions with focus on vaccines. We demonstrate different types of uncertainty for economic evaluations and key aspects to evaluate preventive and curative medicine.

We accept applications until 30 June 2024 (unless maximum capacity has been reached). Non-EU-citizens are advised to apply before 15 May 2024, because the visa-application can take up 3 months.

All applications are submitted and processed through the enrolment platform Mobility Online. They are evaluated by the academic committee and the programme coordinators. Decisions will be made on a rolling basis.

In case your application is accepted, you will receive further practical information on payment and visa. Note that your registration is only complete when the tuition fee is received on the university's bank account.

Accepted participants will be registered as regular students of the University of Antwerp and will hence receive a student account which gives them access to the catering facilities and to the Wi-Fi network of the University of Antwerp. Furthermore, accepted participants will be automatically insured under the policy of the University of Antwerp.