Detailed below are brief descriptions of the background, skills and expertise of the CRC Health Economic Unit.
Mike has had a variety of different roles within the Pharmaceutical industry, both in Sales, Sales and management training and also in Health Outcomes. Prior to joining CRC he was Head of Health Technology Appraisals for sanofi-aventis a position created at the merger of sanofi synthelabo and Aventis. The role involved both strategic project management of products made by sanofi-aventis within HTA appraisals. This drew a project team of members from a wider range of disciplines and outlooks.
Mike also developed a number of systems that increased the profile of HTA issues within the global organisation. This embedded knowledge about HTA processes and philosophies of the various agencies has enabled sanofi-aventis to be highly informed of developments in the HTA community and therefore helped both lead and react appropriately. Sanofi aventis for instance were one of the first companies to submit through the STA process and though the various committees Mike has been an integral part on giving feedback and developing the process. Mike has worked with industry partners on the ABPI User group, Chaired the sub committee for guidelines in the UK as well as an active member of the smaller committees as the SMC user group and Welsh TDA User group.
Mike gained a degree in Applied Chemistry. During his career he gained a MBA and a certificate in Health Economics at Aberdeen University. His interest extends from both simple and complex project management in organisations to the use of knowledge in organisations and how it can be successfully managed and used appropriately.
Peter is an economist who gained his Masters Degree in Social Sciences from Waikato University, New Zealand. He also has a post graduate diploma in health economics from Tromso University, Norway and a Diploma in Management Studies from Henley in the UK. He has had 7 year's experience with reimbursement agencies in New Zealand and the UK, and 6 years with the pharmaceutical industry for Aventis and Sanofi-Aventis. His roles have included reimbursement negotiation, health economic analyses (including being a lead author in drafting New Zealand's health economic guidelines for pharmaceutical), evidence based medicine review, financial planning and forecasting, and advising on clinical trial design. Prior to joining CRC, Peter was Sanofi Aventis' Director of Reimbursement in its Global Health Outcomes and Market Access group.
Pricing and reimbursement in the pharmaceutical sector; negotiation and strategy planning; clinical study design; group and project management; economics and health economics.
Developing record linkage real world database to facilitate the epidemiology and burden of illness associated with oncology; economic modeling and philosophy, including ethical issues around healthcare.
Phil is a mathematician who gained his PhD at the School of Mathematics, Cardiff University on work related to modeling the AIDS epidemic. This involved the development of deterministic and stochastic compartmental simulation models for use with back projection methods for quantifying the incidence of HIV infection. Following this he was employed as a research associate at the School investigating the use and validity of cardiovascular risk functions in type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Phil also taught the final year undergraduate 'Computational Statistics' module at the School of Mathematics with Professor Zhigljavsky. Phil was a founding member of CRC and for the first seven years worked as Director and Senior Research Mathematician primarily developing stochastic simulation models and multivariate statistical models for use in reimbursement submissions.
Simulation modeling and multivariate statistical data analysis.
Efficient simulation methods and methods for the reduction of variance in simulation models.
15 years multiple IT system design, programming and support including database and flat file systems. 10 Years experience in Database Analysis typically in large datasets 100000 rows or more including the ability to transfer knowledge about large complex databases in a simple yet complete fashion. Large database administration expertise including Ms SQL Server and Ms Access 10 years IT technical support experience to very large user groups typically 1000 or more. Multiple Operating System understanding and practical experience including VMS, UNIX and Server 2000.
Extensive experience of meeting the reporting requirements of UK government bodies including:
Data warehouse implementation and design including the first successful UK student records Business Objects university launch. Practical and theoretical understanding of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (studied at HNC level) including the design and test to component level. The design and implentation of ISO9000 workplace quality systems.
Since gaining an Honours degree in Mathematics and Computing from University College Cardiff in 1986, Tony has worked primarily in the development of database management systems and software applications. Skills encompass data modelling, database design, function and data analysis, requirements specification and applications programming. With regard to the latter, Tony places specific emphasis on robustness of design, good data validation and testing. Tony has worked as a consultant for Glaxo Group Research, the Environment Agency, BP Chemicals, Centrica and the Welsh Assembly Government prior to joining the team at Cardiff Research Consortium.
Relational Database Management Systems – 20 years (includes Oracle, Ingres, SQLBase, MySQL, Access). Application Languages include: Pro*C, Procedural SQL, C, C++, Java, VBA.
Interests include mathematical modeling and algorithmic design.
Andrea was awarded her BSc in biochemistry from Cardiff University in 1996; she received an MSc in biotechnology from the University of Kent and a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Bristol University before coming back to Cardiff University as a post-doctoral scientist. She worked for the National Public Health Service as a surveillance scientist in the field of hospital acquired infections between leaving academia and joining CRC.
Andrea's background in biochemical research and healthcare surveillance brought her to CRC, where she shares the role of project manager and data analyst.
Kim originally trained as a biochemist at Leeds University and later went on to research Clostridium difficile for an MPhil. Kim joined the pharmaceutical industry over 20 years ago; she has worked in sales and marketing, drug development, clinical research and global health outcomes. Kim has worked for Innovex, Jansen, Duncan Flockhart, Glaxo, GlaxoWellcome and GSK.
Within the pharma industry Kim led and implemented the internal marketing of a health outcomes franchise within a major R and D organisation; this facilitated the full integration of the discipline into global drug development and directly contributed to improved sales and market access. Kim has extensive writing experience across a number of therapeutic areas and business disciplines (clinical research, commercial, health economics). Kim has a diploma in marketing and significant experience of working on global corporate business projects particularly during periods of change.
Kim established and maintained a successful health outcomes communications company between 2001 and 2006. Kim provided services that ranged from technical HTA submission to commercial and organisational support. Kim then joined a local UK based consultancy service for a year as Global Development Director to provide that organisation with the platform to internationalise their business. Kim specialises in communication and health outcomes.
Christopher Morgan received a BA from Sheffield University in History in 1989 and a MSc in Computing from the University of Wales, He joined the University of Wales College of Medicine Centre for Applied Public Health Medicine in 1993 developing and evaluating a Community Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) scheme. Subsequently his research interests have centered on the linkage and analysis of large scale routine databases. This has led to several innovative publications particularly within the fields of diabetes and epilepsy.
Rhys's background is in injuries epidemiology, having been a Senior Public Health Information Analyst in the NPHS, running the All Wales Injuries Surveillance System (AWISS) since 1999. He has developed a sound knowledge of the use multiple health data sources as well as a strong understanding of numerous database systems. Since doing his Master in Public Health (MPH) at the University of Wales College of Medicine in 2002 he has developed an interest in the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in understanding public health problems.
Anette received a BA from the Hamburg School of Business Administration in 2000. During this study she was a trainee at GlaxoWellcome / GSK Germany and wrote her thesis on a health economics topic. After working for the Health Outcome department at GSK in Germany she studied economics with focus on statistics and health economics at the University of Kiel in Germany and was awarded an MSc in economics in 2005. Her MSc thesis on the healthcare costs of obesity was written in collaboration with CRC in Cardiff. Anette is working for CRC as a Health economist and Statistician and is undertaking a PhD at the School of Mathematics, Cardiff University. The area of research for her PhD is the application of Mixed Poisson processes to healthcare settings. Anette's main skills are her knowledge of health economics and her understanding of quantitative methods.
Jason is a health economist who has obtained an honours degree in economics from the University of Adelaide. After being awarded this degree Jason completed post-graduate studies in economics and econometrics at the University of Adelaide. Jason left Australia to undertake his doctorate in the UK. He recently submitted his PhD to the department of public health and epidemiology at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Jason's PhD was an examination of the formal use of subjective evidence in applications of medical decision making in situations where reliable randomised controlled trial or observational data are not available. In his doctoral training Jason has developed skills in data analysis, Bayesian methods, decision analysis, economic modelling and health economics more generally. Jason has also been involved in a variety of methodological projects. The most recent of these has been an examination of the effect of patient preference on outcomes in clinical trials and the use of average utilities in health technology evaluations.
Matthew studied at Cardiff University for three years, where he studied BSc Economics and attained First Class Honours in 2007. The core modules of his degree course were Empirical Economics and Applied Statistics and Mathematics, as well as Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. His strongest traits are his analytical and researching skills, which he developed at university. Matthew joined CRC to utilise these skills in practical environment and further his interest in the field of health economics.
After completing a Physics degree, Laurence worked for a number of years in general management roles before deciding to further his career. A short dalliance with the world of accountancy produced a Certified Diploma in Accounting and Finance, after which he decided to concentrate on operational research. He completed his Master’s degree and Doctorate at The University of Birmingham before joining CRC as an Operational Researcher.
Laurence's interests focus on the application of operational research techniques in the health sciences.
Medical statistics - Andrzej's research qualifications are based on the selected modern statistical approaches and on the attempts of scientific integration of medical and statistical knowledge using information on public health statistics (morbidity, mortality, etc.). The adopted research methodology, consisting of advanced Bayesian modelling, disease mapping, spatial disease clustering, survival analyses, and neural networks allowing the assessment of risks within populations to determine spatial patterns of diseases and their clusters and locations, to study their epidemiological/ecological backgrounds, as well as to estimate survival times of 'at risk' populations in a variety of research contexts.