GRAP Opportunity – Cost Effectiveness Analysis for the Mobile Continuing Medical Education Project (Gill)

Opportunity ID: 02-Gill

Project Title: The Mobile Continuing Medical Education Project (The mCME Project)

Faculty Mentor: Chris Gill and Lora Sabin

Description Statement:

In the mCME project, we propose to test the effectiveness of a mobile phone-based continuing medical education (CME) delivery strategy among Vietnamese community-based physician assistants (CBPAs), a cadre of community health workers who provide primary health care to rural and disadvantaged populations.  Effectiveness was assessed using a three-armed randomized control trial involving 660 CBPAs. At baseline and at the end of six months, all subjects will undergo a standardized exam.  We hypothesize that CBPAs who received the SMS text reminders will outscore CBPAs who did not receive reminders, and that CBPAs assigned to the ‘interactive’ mobile CME model (Group 3) will be more engaged in this activity, and outscore those assigned to the ‘passive’ mobile CME model (Group 2). Qualitative assessments will be conducted to analyze participants’ experiences with the intervention. We will be discussing such topics as utilization, technology adoption, and changes in self-efficacy.

We further hypothesize that the mCME strategy will be cost-effective, and will incur the secondary benefits of improved job satisfaction and self-efficacy among the participants. We will be using an incremental cost-effectiveness analysis to compare the cost effectiveness of the intervention in Groups 2 and 3.

Scope of Work:

I am looking for one student to work with me on the cost effective analysis component of this study. Tasks may include the following:

  1. Organizing cost data
  2. Working with the team to appropriately include financial and economic costs
  3. Helping with sensitivity analyses to consider effects of changing some assumptions

Minimum skills required/desired:

Strong knowledge of Excel

Time / Date Expectations:
This work will take approximately 5 hours per week, and will take place from January 2016-March 2016 (or earlier than January, if available)

Additional Material Requested: None

Number of Positions: One (1)

Logistics & Support: Biweekly meetings with the mCME project team