Innovation in digital health and medical technology is transforming how healthcare is delivered. As a Senior Research Consultant in our Digital Health Technologies Consulting sector, Laura Kelly works at the intersection of innovation and evidence, supporting decision-makers and technology developers to evaluate the value and feasibility of novel digital health innovations. In this blog, we sit down with Laura to discuss the evolving landscape of digital health evaluation, and what she enjoys most about her role at YHEC.
What is your name and role?
I’m Laura Kelly, a Senior Research Consultant in the Digital Health Technologies Consulting sector.
Tell us about your qualifications and career path that brought you to YHEC
My background is definitely centred around healthcare. I have an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Sciences, and I later completed a Master’s in Public Health at the University of York. Shortly after that, I spotted a role at YHEC being advertised: I joined as a Research Assistant, then progressed to Research Consultant and, now, Senior Research Consultant. During that time, I spent a year in Vancouver, Canada, working in health economics, before returning to YHEC.
I also benefit from having hands-on clinical experience: before transitioning to health economics, I worked as an electrocardiogram (ECG) technician, and later as a research assistant managing clinical trials in a sexual health clinic. Having that real-world, patient-facing context can be incredibly helpful in my work here at YHEC.
What is the main focus of your work at YHEC?
My primary focus has been in digital health, and I specialise in building early-stage economic models for new digital health technologies or interventions. Often, innovators come to us when there is limited clinical evidence, or they aren’t sure how their technology will fit into the NHS or wider healthcare pathways. I can model these early perspectives, analysing how the technology intersects with the patient pathway, and how it can potentially improve patient outcomes or save resources.
What clients do you typically work with? What’s a key challenge that you help YHEC’s clients overcome?
The work delivered by our Digital Health team supports a diverse client base, ranging from public sector bodies and major charities to early-stage tech developers.
With charities, for example, they might want to introduce a screening programme for a specific disease, so we could model the cost-effectiveness of the programme to build their case. I am about to begin a project with a Scottish mental health charity. While the benefits of mental health programmes are often clear to those delivering and receiving them, demonstrating their wider economic value to funders can be more complex. We can help organisations generate robust evidence of costs and benefits, enabling better-informed funding and policy decisions.
With tech developers, we frequently work with companies that are still in the pilot phase: they may not have tested or even built the technology yet. They come to us to answer critical early questions around whether the technology could be cost effective or which patient population it would offer best value to.
One of the other challenges that we help clients with is navigating the unknown. We can use our experience to explain the basic principles and show them what health economics can do for their business, and also to guide them through complex areas like NICE evaluation processes, funding pathways or grant applications. We regularly collaborate on grant bids, so we have an excellent understanding of how to construct an application.
How do you approach a new project to ensure that the advice you give is the most rigorous and reliable?
Every project begins with foundational research on our part. This can be really enjoyable; I love diving into a completely new disease area, discovering a new technology and exploring how it fits into healthcare, and finding out what evidence already exists. Sometimes, during these early stages of a project, we also work with the client to help them determine what services they need. For example, a client may request a health economic model, but following some research, we can provide our expertise to determine what type and level of evidence is appropriate for their stage of development.
If it’s a disease area I haven’t encountered before, our multidisciplinary setup at YHEC is really helpful. I can almost always find a colleague who has worked in that field who will share their insights. For particularly hard-to-find data, we collaborate with our Review and Evidence Synthesis (RES) colleagues, who are experts at uncovering the right research.
We also have specific approaches when there is a lack of published data. For example, we recently worked on a condition called Fowler’s syndrome (a urinary retention problem in women), which is a condition with poor historical diagnoses, shifting terminology, and very little published evidence. In this instance, we were able to consult directly with clinicians, benefitting from their real-world experience, which ensured our work was rigorous and aligned with current practice.
Do you have favourite methods, or are there any methodological developments that interest you?
I like early-stage economic modelling: it can really help innovators understand the potential value proposition of their product, even when they don’t yet have much evidence.
In terms of emerging methods, I find distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) really interesting because it explicitly evaluates health inequalities. I’m also interested in how our models can incorporate carbon costs and environmental impacts alongside traditional health inequalities – options we are increasingly able to offer our clients.
When a client works with you, how and where will they notice your impact on the success of the project?
I think that clients notice our impact in several ways. Firstly, our expertise allows us to help clients understand the expectations of other stakeholders in the process, such as regulators, health technology assessment (HTA) bodies, payers, clinicians and healthcare providers. We can help guide clients on what evidence is required to promote and enhance the value of their product in a way that aligns with various stakeholders’ needs. This helps clients navigate tricky decisions and contributes to the wider goal of improving patient access to a healthcare innovation.
We also have a very strong track record of publishing work. When clients work with us, we don’t necessarily just produce a report but will explore opportunities to share the results through journal publications or presentations at major conferences.
Finally, we can add value at the conclusion of a project, perhaps outlining future research a client could carry out, or advising about the direction in which we think things are going. This is another example where we use our expertise and guidance to really shape how a client can enhance the value of their product.
What’s one project you’ve worked on recently that you’re particularly proud of, and why?
I recently completed a project with Flo, the period-tracking app, evaluating a new symptom checker for endometriosis. What made the project particularly rewarding was that it led to a publication. For a condition that has historically been under-researched and underfunded, contributing to the evidence base felt like a genuine achievement.
That ties in to my broader interest in women’s health, too. In recent years, the industry has begun to recognise that men’s and women’s health cannot always be modelled according to the same generic assumptions. More opportunities are emerging to design distinct, targeted models for women’s health, especially in the digital space, and I’m excited to be a part of that shift.
What policy impact does your work have?
I regularly work on projects with NICE, and this type of work can have a huge impact. Our findings are integrated directly into national clinical guidelines, meaning they shape the decisions which determine the treatments, digital tools and interventions that are recommended across the NHS. As such, our work directly influences national healthcare policy and public debate.
What’s one emerging trend that you are paying close attention to?
As well as the advancements in women’s health that we’ve already discussed, I am closely tracking the rapid growth of digital mental health apps. I’ve worked with companies like Tellmi and Kooth, who have designed apps which aim to help improve mental health outcomes. NHS policy has emphasised delivering mental health care in community settings, with the aim of improving access and ensuring care is delivered for those with the greatest need. The shift from requiring in-person clinical visits to delivering robust care digitally is a huge change in healthcare delivery, and understanding its impacts and value is vital.
What are you most excited about for the future of your work at YHEC?
Something that’s really interesting is that we’ve begun to apply health economics to some non-traditional sectors: exploring fields like animal welfare and environmental studies shows that our modelling techniques are incredibly versatile! But I am particularly excited to look at large-scale system changes, things like structural reorganisations within the NHS, combining the expertise of our digital team and YHEC’s NHS Consulting sector.
What is the most rewarding part of your job or what do you enjoy most about working at YHEC?
On a personal level, it’s my team, who are genuinely some of the most positive and collaborative people you could hope to work with.
On a project level, I find patient involvement incredibly interesting. Talking directly to patients gives you a unique understanding of their unmet needs that you cannot get from journals and textbooks, or even from interviewing clinicians. When you are modelling a rare condition with limited evidence, you often have to make baseline assumptions – for example, about how many times someone might need to visit A&E each year. Including the genuine patient voice makes a difference and can make our work more accurate and meaningful.
What’s your favourite thing to do outside work?
It has to be travelling! I love taking long, immersive trips because they give you the time to truly explore the local culture and way of life – which is exactly what I loved about living and working in Vancouver. Right now, I’m excited to be planning an extended trip around South Korea and Japan.
When I’m at home, I go the cinema a lot, often twice a week, thanks to a great independent cinema near to where I live.
Contact us
To learn more about our work in Digital Health, and how the team can support your projects, visit our website.
Reference
Xu Y, Prentice C, Torres-Rueda S. et al. Economic evaluation of a digital symptom checker for endometriosis using a Markov decision process model. npj Digit. Med. 9, 128 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-02332-4
Ng SM, Kelly L, Holmes H et al. Exploring the economic potential of Tellmi: a novel digital mental health support app for children and young adults. BMJ Paediatrics Open. 2025;9:e003592. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjpo-2025-003592
Coote L, Kelly L, Graham C, et al. An early economic evaluation of Kooth, a web-based mental health platform for children and young people with emerging mental health needs. Internet Interventions. 2024;36:100748 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2024.100748
NHS England. Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England. 2019. Available from: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-term-plan/