UW School of Pharmacy Launches Health Technology Assessment Certificate Program

The University of Wyoming School of Pharmacy in the College of Health Sciences has launched a new certificate program aimed at providing practicing pharmacists, other health professionals and health information technology personnel in other related fields advanced training in health technology assessment.

The certificate program, titled “A New Start in Health Technology Assessment,” is delivered completely online, offers 20.5 contact hours and allows those enrolled to proceed at their own pace. There also are two group sessions presented on Zoom when participants can compare progress and engage in learning discussions.

One of the challenges facing the modern pharmacy industry is the need for additional training of pharmacy professionals who will then have the capability and ability to apply standardized scientific assessments of medications, cost evaluations and even measurements for successful marketing efforts. UW’s School of Pharmacy is a fully accredited Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education provider of continuing professional education.

Pharmacy professions that will benefit from this new certificate program include pharmacists interested in applying health technology assessment to medications; industry managers and other employees in areas of economics, measurement and clinical trials; those in areas related to mediation discovery, assessment and marketing; people in pharmacy education areas; and health economists.

Elliott Sogol, director of postgraduate and continuing education in the School of Pharmacy, says the new program will give those who complete the training a “new lens” to look more clearly at standards for product assessments and applied physical and social sciences such as education, psychology and economics.

“We are excited to offer our first certificate program and look forward to the feedback we receive from participants,” Sogol says. “Their feedback will help us in developing additional certificate programs in the future.”

In addition to the two online group sessions, the new certificate program is presented in three parts: required evidentiary standards for product and therapy assessment; the failure of approximate modeled information for therapy decisions; and formulary submission value claims and protocols for a new start in product evaluation. Each part is broken up into several modules.

Enrollment is now open for the first class of attendees, with the program officially available today (Friday). For more information and to enroll, visit https://pharmacyshare.catalog.instructure.com/courses/certificate-program---a-new-start-in-health-technology.

About UW’s College of Health Sciences

UW’s College of Health Sciences trains health and wellness professionals and researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, speech-language pathology, social work, kinesiology, public health, health administration and disability studies. The college also oversees residency and fellowship programs in Casper and Cheyenne, as well as operating a speech/hearing clinic in Laramie and primary care clinics in Laramie, Casper and Cheyenne.

With more than 1,600 undergraduate, graduate and professional students, the college is dedicated to training the health and wellness workforce of Wyoming and conducting high-quality research and community engagement, with a particular focus on rural and frontier populations.