Health Services Research (HSR) is defined as the ‘integration of epidemiological, sociological, economic and other analytic sciences in the study of the availability, equitable accessibility, use, performance, quality and results of health services’ (International Epidemiology Association‘Dictionary of Epidemiology’ Ed. JM Last 1995).
Such analytic capability has always been highly desirable to guide policy and practice but has become all the more urgent in recent years given the plethora of changes that have occurred in healthcare.