Alastair Gray

Alastair's research focuses on 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.

Most commonly, Alastair works with clinicians and triallists 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.

The economic evaluations he is involved in span many different clinical areas, from psychiatry to neurosurgery and care of the elderly. However, Alastair has particular interests in diabetes, orthopaedic surgery and population screening. These studies often involve the development and use of disease models, typically based on individual patient data, to predict lifetime costs and outcomes; his group has developed these in areas such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and breast cancer.

Quality of life is a crucial aspect of much of his work, and so Alastair 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.

Finally, Alastair has a long-standing interest in wider economic aspects of health care, including the impact of demographic change and ageing populations on health systems, and the economics of health care errors and adverse events.  

Teaching and training are a fundamental aspect of his work, and you can find Alastair supervising 2-4 doctoral students as well as contributing to the Health Economics Research Centre's (HERC) short courses and the MSc Global Health Sciences.