Rafael Pinedo-Villanueva

How do diseases affect people’s health and quality of life? What burden do interventions place on the healthcare system, patients , and their families? What decisions should healthcare systems make as they spend limited resources? With my work I try to answer these questions with regards to a wide variety of diseases, with a particular interest in musculoskeletal conditions. My work focuses primarily on osteoporosis and fracture prevention, osteoarthritis, and rare musculoskeletal diseases such as osteogenesis imperfecta and XLH.

I use routinely collected data (real-world evidence) to understand the journey that people with these diseases make as they receive care, what this costs the healthcare system, and how their quality of life is affected. I use all this information to build economic models that can then help us better understand what the most efficient ways of treating patients are likely to be.

I lead the health economic component of various projects lasting anywhere from one to seven years and funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), charity organisations both national and international, and industry partners. My work is highly collaborative as our research is undertaken working together with medics, statisticians, allied health professionals, and patients themselves.

I studied Economics and Political Science in the United States, completed an MSc in Public Policy in Venezuela, and then went on to do an MSc and PhD in Health Economics in the UK. Having studied in these three different countries, it is no surprise I am captivated by diversity, whether it is historical, political, cultural, or gastronomical, or simply in terms of what matters to people as they go about and make decisions in their lives.