Health economist welcomed to Health Innovation Network

A passionate health economist with over 10 years’ experience is joining the Health Innovation Network for south London.

Dr Anna Buylova will start in her new role at the HIN in December, moving from the Health Economics Unit. Her experience includes decision modelling, methodologies of study design and conducting health economic evaluations across a range of diseases, settings and population groups, including measuring determinants of socio-economic inequality in access to healthcare services. She is particularly interested in emerging trends in statistical methodology and in making the most of NHS data to improve care for patients.

Before joining the Health Economics Unit, Anna worked on the evaluation of innovative medical technologies (including digital health and artificial intelligence technologies) helping the NHS adopt efficient and cost-effective medical devices and diagnostics more rapidly and consistently. This included cost utility, cost consequence, cost-effectiveness (including building de novo Markov models) and budget impact models; as well as delivery of projects funded through NHS AI Lab and Healthcare awards.

She will be part of the HIN’s successful Insights team offering supporting on evaluation and data analytics. Currently, the team is working on health and care projects including an evaluation of virtual wards in South West London and a national pilot on hearing checks in residential schools for children with additional needs.

Dr Andrew Walker, Head of Insights at the HIN said: “Being able to demonstrate the financial impacts of innovations and new models of care is a crucial part of evaluating public sector programmes so it’s exciting that Anna will be joining our team.”

Dr Buylova said: “I’m looking forward to using my skills to highlight what models of care provide best value for money in the NHS so we can promote the spread and adoption of innovation quickly.”