Contributors

Contributor Biography

Sam Hollingsworth is an academic in the School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland. She has an honorary appointment at Imperial College London (School of Public Health) as part of the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI). She has an active interest in health systems and health services research. Sam works on health technology assessment (HTA) and economic evaluations with a particular focus on low and middle-income countries (LMIC) and non-communicable diseases (NCD). Sam worked as a consultant in health technology assessment (HTA) in Australia for many years evaluating submissions to subsidise medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). She has worked on international health projects in Indonesia and is currently working on several projects in HTA and medicines use in Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa. Kalipso Chalkidou is the Director of the Global Health and Development Group at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, helping governments build technical and institutional capacity for improving the value for money of their healthcare investment. She is interested in how local information, local expertise and local institutions can drive scientific and legitimate healthcare resource allocation decisions whilst improving patient outcomes. She has been involved in the Chinese rural health reform and also in national health reform projects in the USA, India, Colombia, Turkey and the Middle East, working with the World Bank, PAHO, DFID and the Inter-American Development Bank as well as national governments. Between 2008 and 2016 she founded and ran NICE International, a non-profit group within the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Francis Ruiz is a Senior Adviser for the Global Health and Development Group at Imperial College London. He previously worked at the National Institute of Heath and Care Excellence (NICE) from 2003 -2016, first within the Technology Appraisals programme, then within the Guidelines team and finally with NICE International. He has a specialist interest in health economics and has worked on a number of technology appraisals and guidelines in a variety of therapeutic areas. Prior to joining NICE, Francis worked for over six years in clinical data management and health economics within the pharmaceutical sector. Francis graduated with a BSc in physiology from the University of Dundee in 1993. He also holds a post-graduate diploma in psychology from the Royal Holloway (University of London) and an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Hygiene/London School of Economics.