Karla Hernández-Villafuerte, PhD

Formally the senior researcher of our Division (August 2017-June 2022), Dr. Karla Hernandez-Villafuerte currently serves as a senior economist at the WifOR Institute in Darmstadt. She has vast experience in examining factors that influence the decision making process for the reimbursement of new medicines. Currently, she is developing a holistic micro- and macro-economic impact evaluation tool for assessing the overall economic impact of new health technologies.

At the Division of Health Economics at the DKFZ, she was a primary investigator in evaluating the efficacy of multi-attribute utility instruments that reflect quality of life of cancer patients, and she had a lead role in creating a framework for assessing the research and development costs of a new medicine. In addition, she has been instrumental in projects examining the socioeconomic impact of cancer on patients and their families/caregivers.

Prior to working the DKFZ, Karla was part of the Office of Health Economics (OHE) in London. Her work at the OHE included a variety of research projects. These included the evaluation of statistical and health economic issues in cancer survival and analysis of the evolution of HTA in developing countries within the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI). She has a PhD in economics from the University of Göttingen in Germany and a master's degree in economics from the University of Costa Rica.

Selected Publications

K. Hernandez-Villafuerte, B. Zamora, Y. Feng, D. Parkin, N. Devlin, A. Towse:
Estimating health system opportunity costs: the role of non-linearities and inefficiency.
Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation, 2022: 20(1), 56.
DOI: 10.1186/s12962-022-00391-y.

M. Schlander, K. Hernandez-Villafuerte, C. -Y. Cheng, J. Mestre-Ferrandiz, M. Baumann:
How much does it cost to research and develop a new drug? A systematic review and assessment.
Pharmacoeconomics, (2021) 39(11) 1243-1269.
DOI: 10.1007/s40273-021-01065-y.

K. Hernandez-Villafuerte, A. Fischer, N. R. Latimer:
Challenges and methodologies in using progression free survival as a surrogate for overall survival in oncology.
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, (2018) 34(3) 300-316.
DOI: 10.1017/S0266462318000338.