ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 11 – medicine | health sciences
Productivity. The group produces high quality papers, and in high
numbers. Funding has been in the mid range or at the higher end of the
department’s share of external funding (22,4 MSEK during the assessment
period. The papers and other outputs suggest a very productive
group. The leading researcher has published many articles including 11
papers in 2007 demonstrating high productivity but the unique contribution
of other members of the group which consists of about 11 persons
(1 prof., 3 senior researchers, 3 junior researchers and 3 doctoral students
and 3 other employees) is unclear from the information given.
Relevance. The work is highly relevant to social concerns in modern
society. Addictions or overuse of alcohol cause severe health and social
difficulties and this group have targeted at-risk groups for successful
interventions.
Vitality and organisational capacity. The long-term prospects of this
group is threatened by the imminent retirement of the lead professor.
This however is also an opportunity to recruit a new Chair from the
international arena.
Overall grading: Excellent
3.5 Health Economics
(Forensic Medicine is also included in this research area)
Quality. The sub-unit mainly provides health economics expertise to
other researchers undertaking empirical investigations, including randomised
clinical trials. There is a great deal of good quality work supporting
the alcohol team. The submission makes claims for international leading
edge contributions to health economics science but this is not supported
by evidence (for example there are no publications associated with the
EuroQol/EQ5D despite claims in the submission). There are, however,
a small number of high quality publications around the human capital
model which support the submission.
Productivity. The group produce some high quality papers themselves
and are included in other papers produced by research teams as collaborators,
a situation common to health economics researchers. As
such they are productive. Eight refereed papers were published in 2007
which shows good productivity in relation to the size of the basic group
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