Professor Alastair Gray

Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health

About

Professor Gray studies the use of economics to improve resource allocation and decision making in health care. In particular, he is interested in using robust methods to estimate the likely cost-effectiveness of new and existing health care interventions. This may involve synthesising information from different sources on costs, outcomes and effectiveness in a decision-analytic model. He also works with clinicians and researchers to collect individual patient information within large randomised trials, typically assembling and analysing data on the cost of the intervention and the alternative, the outcomes in terms of quality of life and survival, and the cost-effectiveness in the trial and in routine care.

He carries out evaluations in many areas of clinical practice, from psychiatry to neurosurgery and care of the elderly, but has particular interests in diabetes, orthopaedic surgery and population screening. He is also interested in the methodologies used to measure and value different health states, different conceptions of quality of life, and the association between different quality of life measures, and in wider economic aspects of healthcare, including the impact of demographic change and ageing populations on health systems, and the economics of health care errors and adverse events.