Kaylie Metcalfe recently joined Mtech Access as a Consultant Health Economist in our Manchester office. In this interview, we ask about her experiences and activities in her first few weeks with us.
What brought you into a career in Health Economics?
My undergraduate degree in Biomedical Sciences included a year in industry, during which I worked in the quality control department of a lab for diagnostics. Although this was a great experience, I soon realised that it was not the path for me and started to look out for other options.
I stumbled across an advert for a graduate health economics role, which included a funded Master’s degree, in my university city of Sheffield. At that point, I had no exposure to health economics and what it involved. However, I thought that the job description sounded really interesting and varied. Plus, it would be a different application for my science background. I was right!
What motivated you to join Mtech Access?
It was time for a change. I had been at my previous company for over 7 years and felt the time was right to explore something new. I knew that I still enjoyed consultancy and my role as a health economist. So it was a case of looking for a company whose values aligned with my own.
Looking through the company website, Mtech Access seemed like a great fit. There appeared to be a good focus on knowledge sharing. The client testimonials were extremely positive and the variety of services that Mtech Access provide is really broad. I was especially intrigued by the NHS Insight and Interaction team, which is a really unique offering. It’s something I hope to learn more and more about during my time here.
What elements of consultancy do you most enjoy?
The variety of work! I get to work on multiple projects – each with different clients, in different disease areas and using different methodologies, and each with their own set of unique challenges. In a constantly evolving field, there is always something new to learn and people to learn from.
What have you got involved with in your first few weeks with Mtech Access?
During the first couple of weeks, my time was largely filled with induction meetings and introductions to the different teams. It was pretty full-on, but it has been a really good way of getting a good understanding of the company and feeling a part of it from the get go.
I have also joined a few client projects. These have been a nice introduction to how Mtech Access work as a team, and the different types of projects we are involved in. One of the projects involves performing a full validation of a cost-effectiveness model developed by another agency for a product in cardiovascular disease. The aim of the validation is to ensure it is suitable for use in a manuscript.
Additionally, I have worked on various internal model validations. This is where the economic models we develop are quality checked by someone independent from the project team to ensure they are free from error and of the highest quality.
Another project I am working on is conceptualising and developing a value communication tool. This is something that I have had minimal exposure to in my previous role and is something I am looking forward to getting stuck into more.
Outside of project work, I have been helping the team develop proposals for a variety of potential health economic modelling projects.
To help me get up to speed with the different processes here, I attended a Project Management training session in the York office. This was really productive and a nice opportunity to visit one of the other offices!
I've subsequently had the opportunity to develop some training material and helped produce 'An introduction to health economics' that will be presented to other service areas within Mtech Access.
What has most surprised you about Mtech Access?
I felt like I had a good feel for the ‘vibe’ of Mtech Access after talking to members of the team during my interview process. Everyone is really friendly, and there is an open and non-judgemental culture.
What I wasn’t expecting was how thorough the induction process would be. It was so well organised and gave me a great welcome into the company.
If you could swap your expertise and role with a colleague from another team, who would you swap with?
I would probably say one of my colleagues in the digital team. This is not something in my skillset at all, but I think it is unique to be able to work alongside a dedicated digital team, and the tools they produce look fascinating!
To find out more about our health economics expertise and services, or to learn more about our customer communication tools, please email info@mtechaccess.co.uk.
If you are interested in joining our team at Mtech Access, please visit our careers page for details of our current vacancies.
