James Altunkaya

I am an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow in the Health Economics Research Centre at NDPH. My DPhil aims to provide economic evidence regarding the role of precision medicine in prediabetes. 

Prediabetes affects people in different ways, with some developing type 2 diabetes very quickly and some not at all. Nevertheless, prediabetes screening and treatment is generally the same for all patients, as the economic argument for precision medicine in prediabetes is not established. 

In my DPhil, I am building and validating a new economic model of prediabetes and its consequences. This combines data from several clinical trials and cohort studies to predict individual patients’ long-term health outcomes and costs. This will allow us to understand the cost-effectiveness of early precision interventions targeted to specific prediabetes patients. 

I joined HERC in 2019 as a researcher in health economics, and prior to this I held a NIHR Research Methods Fellowship at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. At York, I was a member of a NICE academic evidence review group critiquing the economic case for introducing new pharmaceuticals and medical devices into the NHS. 

I hold an MSc in Public Health (Health Economics) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.