Econometrics of Health Care - which we have sometimes called 'medico-
metrics' - is a field in full expansion. The reasons are numerous: our
knowl- edge of quantitative relations in the field of health
econometrics is far from being perfect, a large number of analytical
difficulties - combining medical (latent factors, e. g. ) and economic
facts (spatial behaviour, e. g. ) are faced by the research worker,
medical and pharmaceutical techniques change rapidly, medical costs
rocket more than proportionally with available resources, of being
tightened. medical budgets are in the process So it is not surprising
that the practice of 'hygieconometrics' - to produce a neologism - is
more and more included in the programmes of econometri- cians. The
Applied Econometrics Association has devoted to the topic two symposia
in less than three years (Lyons, February 1983; Rotterdam, December
1985), without experiencing any difficulties in getting valuable papers:
on econometrics of risks and medical insurance, on the measurement of
health status and of efficiency of medical techniques, on general models
allowing simulation. These were the themes for the second meeting, but
other aspects of medical-economic problems had presented themselves
already to the analyst: medical decision making and its consequences,
the behaviour of the actors - patients and physicians -, regional
medicometrics and what not: some of them have been covered by the first
meeting. Finally, in July 1988 took place in Lyons the Fourth
International Conference on System Science in Health Care; it should not
be astonishing .
