Honorary Staff

Dennis Petrie - Honorary Research Fellow

Dennis joined HERU as an Honorary Research Fellow in 2010. He is a SIRE Lecturer in Health Economics at the University of Dundee. Dennis' research focuses on the economics of drugs and alcohol, measuring and evaluating changes in health inequalities and the performance and efficiency of health care systems. Among other projects, he is currently involved in a grant with Anne Ludbrook and Swedish colleagues examining the avoidable costs of alcohol misuse in Sweden and a grant from the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) on the development of tools to measure and explain changes in health inequalities in Scotland with colleagues at the University of Dundee and Lund University, Sweden.

Professor Anthony Scott - Honorary Professor

Tony is a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute. He is a health economist and leads the Institute's research into the economics of health care. Previously, Tony has worked at the Universities of Aberdeen, Newcastle, Sydney and York. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Aberdeen. Tony is also an Honorary Professor in the Health Economics Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen.

Tony's research interests have focussed on the economics of general practice and primary care, incentives for health care providers, and the labour markets of health care professionals.

He has published extensively in a range of journals and has also been involved in advising the English and Scottish Health Departments on resources allocation, new contracts for GPs and health care workforce issues. Tony will build up research at the institute in the area of financing, incentives and organisation of health services.

Professor Matt Sutton - Honorary Professor

Matt is Professor of Health Economics at The University of Manchester where he leads the Health Economics team within the Health Methodology Research Group and the Workforce Theme within the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre. Prior to this, he was Professor of Health Economics at the University of Aberdeen and was Director of the Behaviour, Performance and Organisation of Care Programme in the Health Economics Research Unit. He is also Visiting Professor in Health Economics at the University of Bergen. Matt's research addresses the issues of workforce, resource allocation and performance in health care and involves the development and application of microeconometric techniques.

Colin Tilley - Honorary Research Fellow

Colin is Dental Workforce Project Lead with NHS Education for Scotland (NES). His work with NES is in the area of training and labour markets for health professionals and in the analysis of administrative data, both with a particular focus on dentistry and nursing and midwifery. Together with Martin Chalkley, Colin has analysed the impact of location of training, supply-side incentives and demand-side cost sharing on the treatment decisions of dentists. Martin, Jim Rennie (NES) and Colin have analysed the retention of dentists within NHS Scotland after training and the variation in patients’ expenditure in NHS dental services in Scotland. Divine Ikenwilo (HERU) and Colin have examined the sources of variation in access to public and private dental services in Scotland. Colin has also examined the determinants of completion from pre-registration nursing and midwifery training in Scotland.

Luke Vale- Honorary Professor

Luke currently holds the Health Foundation Chair in Health Economics at Newcastle University where he lead the Health Economics Group.  Prior to joining Newcastle University he has Professor of Health Technology Assessment in both the Health Economics Research Unit and the Health Services Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen.   His main area of work is in economic evaluation and health technology assessment and he has contributed significantly to the growth in the use of systematic reviews and economic modelling in this field.   He is the Chairman of the joint economic methods group of the international Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations, which develop the methods and conduct systematic reviews of interventions in health care and other policy areas.   He is an author of over 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 4 books, 15 book chapters and almost 80 other significant reports.

His key research interests are:

  • Economic evaluation as part of randomised controlled trials and Health Technology Assessments
  • Use of economic evaluation techniques in the design of complex interventions and health technologies
  • Development of methods for the incorporation of discrete choice experiments and willingness to pay estimates into economic evaluation