Researcher profile

Borislava Mihaylova

Borislava is Professor of Health Economics (2018), lead of the Health Economics and Policy Research Unit (2022) and Deputy Lead of the Centre for Evaluation and Methods (2025) in the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London. She also holds a part-time position of Professor of Health Economics in the Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. While studying BSc/MSc in Computer Sciences and Financial Technologies at the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria (1990-95), Borislava became involved in the development of the National Health Insurance system in Bulgaria. In 1993-9 she worked at the National Centre of Public Health and National Health Insurance Fund, Bulgaria on the design and implementation of case-mix payment methods for hospital care in Bulgaria. After completing her MSc in Health Economics at the University of York, UK (2000), she took a research post at the University of Southampton working on the health economics of the NHS out-of-hours care and growth hormone treatments in children and adults. In 2001-5 she completed a DPhil in Health Economics at the University of Oxford studying the cost-effectiveness of simvastatin in people at different cardiovascular disease risk in the 20,000-large Heart Protection Study guided by Professors Andrew Briggs, Rory Collins, Alastair Gray, Jane Armitage and Sarah Parish and supported by a NHS Training Fellowship. Borislava leads research on impact of diseases and treatments on morbidity, mortality, health-related quality of life and healthcare/other resources and costs; cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment strategies; and development of evaluative frameworks and disease models to assess net effects of policies and treatments. She develops applied and methodological research across high burden disease areas and public health problems aiming to contribute robust evidence that reliably informs national and international health policy. Borislava teaches health economics and supervises PhD students. She leads the 'Effective and Efficient Evaluation' theme in the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme “Health data in practice: human-centred science” and co-leads the MSc module “Health Economic Analyses”, QMUL.