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TION O1 Welcome

SEC from the Director

Welcome to the 2019 Annual Report of the Health
Economics Research Unit (HERU)
In 2019 we launched Scottish Health Economics (SHE). SHE is a collaboration of
health economists from Scotland’s universities, NHS and government. The aim of
the group is to bring together researchers and users of health economics to explore
the development and application of health economics in Scotland. The launch event
in October provided a great showcase for health economics in Scotland. We are
looking forward to continuing to lead this exciting development.
2019 saw some great successes in grant awards. We led on a number of successful
grants including two grants funded by the Health Improvement, Protection and
Services Committee of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO): ‘Should Scotland provide
whole genomic sequencing for diagnosis of rare disorders? A health economic analysis’
and ‘Does minimum unit pricing for alcohol have unintended consequences for diet
and health? A natural experiment comparing Scotland and England’. We were also
the health economics lead on a number of prestigious National Institute for Health
Research (NIHR) funded trials and other grants totalling around £6 million.
Maintaining and strengthening our international collaborations is of key importance.
We ran a successful visiting scholar programme attracting two prominent
international economists to HERU. Professor Mark Harris from Curtin University
in Perth, Australia, and Professor Liam Delaney, a behavioural economist from
University College Dublin. We were delighted that Marjon van der Pol was awarded a
Visiting Research Scholar award from the University of Melbourne.
Our online MSc in Health Economics for Health Professionals continues to do well
with 61 students on the course by the end of 2019. Several students conducted their
MSc dissertation over the summer. The wide range of topics reflects the breadth of
the course. I very much enjoyed reading about the projects. Our popular Discrete
Choice Experiment course ran in both Canada and Aberdeen in 2019 and attracted
delegates from many different countries. 2019 was also a good year for our PhD
students. Dwayne Boyers, Kevin Momanyi and Gillian Scanlon graduated, and
Ben Sakowsky passed his PhD viva with minor changes. Congratulations to all. We
warmly welcomed Mélanie Antunes and Huixuan Gao to our cohort of PhD students.

We always explore new ways of engaging with policy makers and practitioners and
in 2019 we launched a blog as a way to summarise our research, with a focus on
policy implications. We produced a wide variety of blogs in the first year including a
short video where I introduce HERU. We welcome any feedback.
Sadly, we said goodbye to Ramses Abul Naga, Nicolas Krucien, Maria Dimitrova,
and Alastair Irvine, we wish them all the best. We welcomed two new members of
staff: Michael Abbott (a previous intern!) and Charlotte Kennedy, who both recently
completed an MSc in Health
Economics from the University
of York.
I hope you enjoy reading this
report. For more information on our
activities visit our website and our
Professor Mandy Ryan blog (www.abdn.ac.uk/heru/blog/)
Director and for real time news visit our
twitter account @HERU_Abdn.

HERU ANNUAL REPORT 2019 3