Shaping smarter healthcare decisions through economic evaluation at Imperial  

Professor Anita Patel, Provost's Visiting Professor of Health Economics at Imperial College London, talks about the thinking behind the recently launched Imperial Health Economic Evaluation (IHEE). 

IHEE is a new joint initiative between Imperial Business School and the School of Public Health to build a flagship institutional capability in health economic evaluation. Its aim is to embed robust economic analysis at every stage of health innovation and research, supporting both internal projects and eventually external partnerships.  

Q: What inspired the creation of the Imperial Health Economic Evaluation initiative? 
In any resource-constrained system, any ‘new’ programme or innovation - be it a medicine, medical device or a different way of delivering a care pathway - often requires robust economic and outcomes data to demonstrate value for money, either to justify new investment or to understand the implications of redirecting existing resources. Throughout my career, I’ve worked on economic evaluations for health interventions across national and global settings, so I understand well the methods, process and value of generating such evidence robustly. 

Imperial College London is home to outstanding health-related research across all faculties, from basic sciences through to translational (research that is concerned with facilitating the practical application of scientific discoveries to the development and implementation of new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease). But embedding economic evaluation into research has often been challenging due to underdeveloped capacity at Imperial in this area of health economics.   

Health economists and other related capabilities are dispersed across faculties and departments at the university – with some critical masses at the Business School and the School of Public Health. However, they have tended to converge around specific areas of research, e.g. infectious diseases, which entail specific methodological focuses.

While such expertise is helpful for specific areas there is a wider need that draws on a whole mix of approaches across different clinical contexts and this kind of generalisable economic evaluation within an organised structure has been a long-standing gap area at Imperial, leading to those needing economic evaluation expertise to frequently look for this outside the institution.

IHEE directly addresses this fragmentation and gap by consolidating expertise within a centralised collaborative hub that strengthens Imperial’s capacity in this crucial area.

Ultimately, it’s about embedding economic insight into every step of health innovation across all of Imperial’s health-related ecosystem, so that great ideas don’t just remain ideas - they become sustainable, impactful solutions.

We hosted a launch event in June 2025 to introduce this new initiative designed to strengthen Imperial’s capacity for economic evaluation in health research. IHEE embodies Imperial’s strategy of scientifically grounded interdisciplinary research.

During my time at Imperial so far, I have been mapping the economic evaluation landscape across the college and have spent many hours speaking individually with people who have any interest in economic evaluation, whether in undertaking this kind of research, or needing support in it. As a next phase, the event was focussed on bringing people in a room together to have open conversations about who needs what kind of support so that the shape and nature of IHEE fits the need.  

We intentionally brought together the “supply” of economic expertise and the “demand” from researchers and clinicians in one space. We are committed to engage in a way that includes all staffing levels for socially impactful collaboration. So the event intentionally drew on early career researcher involvement to widen the ownership of the initiative and allow it to evolve to meet the needs of future health challenges. It’s an opportunity to map capability, build relationships, and start thinking strategically about how to embed this across Imperial’s health research legacy. 

Q: How do you plan to engage with external stakeholders interested in health economic evaluation? 

The first step is visibility. Creating a named entity - Imperial Health Economic Evaluation - gives funders, partners, and all stakeholders something concrete to connect with. There are obviously some basic administrative prerequisites e.g. an email point of contact, a dedicated webpage, directory of expertise and support mechanisms to make collaboration easier. 

But it’s really about building meaningful connections and a track record. Isolated successful projects don’t in themselves signal long-term capability. A structured network with active and invested members, strong and impactful outputs, and shared goals does. Other researchers and funders want to engage with teams that are credible, diverse, and strategically aligned. 

Q: How important is it to deal with the complexity of health economics before solving challenges at large scale? 
Health challenges are rarely isolated. They sit within wider structural contexts that involve social, behavioural, political, commercial, environmental, and technological dimensions. Economic evaluation of potential solutions would ideally account for such context in understanding value – although in reality the extent to which this happens is driven by the nature of decision-making frameworks, both explicitly and implicitly.

Nevertheless, interdisciplinary approaches are often necessary even when not allowing for the full scale of complexity.

For example, if assessing a robotic surgical tool, it is relevant to account for engineering insights, clinical outcomes, patient and professional experiences, and market potential. Or in evaluating post-heart-attack behavioural interventions, it may be important to consider patient psychology, caregiver burden, and long-term cost implications including impacts on work productivity. 

We want IHEE to be a diverse and versatile collection of expertise that not just undertakes economic analysis for others but offers informed ideas and contributions to help frame these interdisciplinary questions in a way that leads to meaningful, actionable and scalable insights. 

Health, innovation and improvement is not just about the human body but also people's behaviour and the conditions in which illness arises and the conditions in which illness can be solved.

Q: What kind of projects can drive innovation in this space? 
We’re already seeing engagement across domains: engineers developing health tech, clinicians designing care models, and social scientists working on behavioural interventions. Projects might range from national policy evaluations to local, community-based studies. 

Crucially, we want evaluations to reflect real-world impact - not just system efficiency but also the lived experience of patients and carers. Embedding economic evaluation from the outset ensures research has both scientific and societal relevance. 

Q: What does the initiative need to succeed and what is its long-term vision? 
Strong foundations are essential for growing capabilities that are relevant and sustainable. Initially, we need a few key ingredients like resourcing for key posts, and commitment to a growth plan. Along with the initial investment, we need people who can dedicate energy to drive this forward with a truly collaborative spirit that can move beyond siloed thinking. A centralised hub is important for facilitating this. 

A few high-quality grant wins can change everything. They enable us to recruit dedicated researchers who can embed economic thinking into everyday research. We also can't achieve a long-term roadmap that is simply led by senior academics - PhD students and early-career researchers are critical for giving the initiative life through initiating ideas and projects, contributing to training and development, and ultimately sustaining the work and human connections.

In an organisation as large and diverse as Imperial, that might well entail tricky internal conversations about sharing credit, rethinking collaboration and funding allocation mechanisms, and embracing new ways of working – but these are all just processes and it is important to keep a clear view that they merely exist to support the end goal of producing excellent research that informs policy and practice. Imperial has world-leading expertise.

But to realise our full potential, we need to act as one - cohesive, connected, and committed to collaboration.  

Note: This Q & A was updated ton 04.04.2025 to better reflect the outcomes of the IHEE launch.