Context

NIHR has funded a number of infrastructure projects. This sub-group focuses on the role of health economics in two infrastructure projects:

• Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs)

  NIHR funded a total of 20 Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs). These are networks of experts that work collaboratively between NHS Trusts and internationally renowned universities. The BRCs are located across England and are centred around academic centres of excellence.

  The main purpose of the BRCs is to facilitate early stage experimental medicine research and support the translation of scientific discoveries. Crucially, BRCs are supposed to enable the translation of early scientific breakthroughs into potential new treatments, diagnostics and health technologies.  Health economics has a key role in this translation pathway. 

• HealthTech Research Centres (HRCs)

  NIHR funded 14 HealthTech Research Centres (HRCs). These are centres of excellence located in leading NHS organisations across England. Each HRC is focused on a particular clinical topic or healthcare challenge.

  The purpose of the HRCs is to accelerate the development of healthcare technologies to improve the effectiveness and quality of health and care services. The HRCs act at the interface between academic and industry, the goal being to enable and help companies developing medical devices, digital technologies, diagnostics and in vitro diagnostics (collectively known as healthtech) to evaluate and validate new health healthtech to address healthcare challenges. This includes help to generate evidence and demonstrate value (health economics).

Sub-group session - launch event

The BRCs and HRCs sub-group session was convened by Katherine Payne, The University of Manchester and Tracey Sach, University of Southampton. The aim of this session was to begin to understand the current, and possible future roles, of health economics in programmes of work in NIHR-funded Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) and Health Tech Research Centres (HRCs). 

The session was structured around an opening presentation that provided an overview of the goal of BRCs and HRCs. This presentation also summarised the results of a survey sent to Directors of BRCs and HRCs to understand their views on the role of health economics and how it is embedded in the programme of work for these Centres.

There were also presentations by health economists currently working with BRCs/HRCs to share their experiences. 

The final discussion focused on what the sub-group should focus on in the future. The discussion briefly touched on:

• understanding how we could/should interact across BRCs/HRCs
• if and how we should network and meet
• how we should establish an agenda for the future.

A self-selecting sub-group of health economists decided to meet online to plan the future of the sub-group.   

Future plans

Sub-committee

We have formed a committee comprising the co-leads together with representatives from HRCs/BRCs across England:

• Sub-group committee membership

  • Kyriaki Giorgakoudi
    City St George’s, University of London, representing the Biomedical Research Centre
    at The Royal Marsden and Institute of Cancer Research

  • Gurdeep Sagoo
    University of Newcastle, representing the NIHR in Diagnostic and Technology Evaluation
  • Mara Violato
    University of Oxford, representing Oxford Health BRC
  • Jane Wolstensholme
    University of Oxford, representing the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre
    Community Healthcare
  • Sarah Wordsworth
    University of Oxford, representing the Oxford BRC

The committee met on 4th November 2025 and plans to meet online every 2 months. We first reflected on the NIHR Economics launch event and then set a list of tasks for the committee. Our first task is to create a list of named health economists leading or working on health economics in the BRCs/HRCs. At this point we will include both BRCs and HRCs, but in the future we may split the sub-group into separate groups for BRCs and HRCs depending on numbers.

Questionnaire

We plan to develop a brief questionnaire to send to health economists working in the HRCs/BRCs to further understand:

• How is health economics represented in the current infrastructures?
• How is health economics work currently funded?
• What is the proportion of funding for health economics compared with the overall budget for the BRC/HRC?
• Planning for the next round of BRCs and whether there is scope for collaborative working.