In the last ten months, all Work Package (WP) and Horizontal Activity (HA) leads were intensively working together to set up a completely structured and harmonised workflow between all WPs and HAs with clear responsibilities and timelines. The PECUNIA Concept Paper provides the building blocks for all research strands throughout the PECUNIA project that are mutually connected and serves multiple purposes. It builds the basis for the standardised procedure in creating country reports. These will contain lists of most relevant services and interventions in the sectors of health and social care, education system, criminal justice, patients, family and informal care as well as factors driving productivity loss. The Concept Paper will also facilitate the monitoring of the scientific progression of the project and allow us to identify any deviations in which case a newer, updated version will be developed of the step-by-step work plan.
Another central dynamic component is the PECUNIA glossary of terms that defines the harmonised key terms following internationally used terminologies and classification systems. It will be used to describe services/resources and to develop a suitable mapping tool of interventions/services to identify standard, transferable units of analysis of resource utilisation and the valuation of monetary unit costs. Overall, the Concept Paper also serves the purpose of finalising an overarching theoretical framework for the project.
Besides presenting the Concept Paper at upcoming scientific conferences and workshops, a comprehensive report of over 120 pages will be made available as a peer-reviewed publication to the greater scientific community.