Associate Professor Jon Karnon

Biography/ Background

Jon Karnon started work at the University of Adelaide in September 2007. He came from the Health Economics and Decision Analysis section at the University of Sheffield in the UK, where he had been based for over five years.

Prior to that Jon was the foundation health economist at the Health and Safety Laboratory. Before that he worked for over five years at the Health Economics Research Group at Brunel University, where he also completed his PhD comparing alternative modeling techniques for the economic evaluation of health care technologies.

Qualifications

BA(Hons) Economic and Social History (University of Leeds)

MSc Health Economics (University of York)

PhD Health Economics 'Economic evaluation of health care technologies: A comparison of alternative decision modelling techniques' (Brunel University)

Teaching Interests

As part of the new masters in Health Economics and Health Policy at the University of Adelaide, Jon is leading the Advanced Health Economic Evaluation and Decision Making module that will cover a wide range of advanced health economic methods and principles.

He has led previous general health economics modules at Brunel University and the University of Sheffield in the UK, as well as a Decision Modeling in Economic Evaluation module at the latter institution.

Research Interests

Jon has significant experience in both applied and methodological research. His principle focus is around the use of decision modeling techniques as a framework for the economic evaluation of health care technologies.

In addition to publishing a wide range of applied modeling studies, methodologically he has compared the costs and benefits of alternative modeling techniques, leading to recommendations around the circumstances in which the alternatives should be applied. Jon also led a review of modeling methodologies for the evaluation of screening programmes, which led to three subsequent applied screening evaluations. He has also developed modeling methods for the evaluation of patient safety technologies.

He is currently developing a new modeling framework for the combined analysis of health service delivery, patient choice, equity and efficiency. This work aims to inform the efficient and equitable organisation and delivery of health care services. The issue of whether a technology (or intervention) is cost-effective, is assessed in the context of the physical resources (i.e. relevant health professionals, clinic space, hospital beds, etc.) and financial resources available to provide interventions and the cost-effectiveness of competing demands for both broad forms of resource.

This capacity constrained cost-effectiveness analysis is applied at the level of clinical specialties, with a pilot study currently ongoing in the area of ophthalmology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. See project website www.adelaide.edu.au/esip

Other ongoing projects include an applied methodological study looking at developing a framework for the economic evaluation of community-based initiatives, which has recently received funding from the Australian Research Council. Project website currently under development (www.adelaide.edu.au/pcsip)

Jon also has current research funds from the South Australian Department of Health to identify equitable and efficient solutions to handling additional hospital demand. See project website www.adelaide.edu.au/hdm

Professional Interests

Jon is on the Editorial board of three Health Economics journals, Pharmacoeconomics, Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, and the Open Pharmacoeconomics Journal.

Jon is a founding member of the South Australian Health Economics Collaborative (HEC). The collaborative aims to facilitate the sharing of research issues and problems, as well as providing a forum for research collaboration and support. The HEC is supported by the SA Department of Health, and so provides direct access to relevant policymakers within the state. Such interaction is intended to increase the rate of translation from research to policy, and is a key objective of the HEC.

He currently sits on the Management Group of the Healthy Aging Research Cluster.

In the UK, he served on the following professional working groups:

• Pharmaceutical Panel for the NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme, which prioritises research projects for funding by the programme

• National Institute for Clinical Excellence, Evaluation of Diagnostics Methods Review Workshop, July 16 2007, Manchester

• AMD Services Provision Subcommittee Royal Colloge of Ophthalmologists

• Steering group for the Screening for Haemoglobinopathies in First Trimester (SHIFT) trial

• Advisory group for the low prevalence pilot studies of Screening for Haemoglobinopathies

• The Medical Research Council N-of-1 trials working group

• The Sheffield Patient Safety Network.

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	Economics, Medicine and medical research
Expertise	cost-effectiveness analysis; health technology assessment; decision modeling; economic evaluation
Notes	Jon is on the Editorial board of three Health Economics journals, Pharmacoeconomics, Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, and the Open Pharmacoeconomics Journal. Jon is a founding member of the South Australian Health Economics Collaborative (HEC).

Entry last updated: Sunday, 28 Jun 2009