Research team

Dr Toni Mora is a full professor at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona). He is currently vice-rector for Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer. His main lines of a research include micro-econometric techniques for health policy impact assessment, and what determines healthcare utilisation and the design of experiments to assess healthcare policies. He also undertakes research in other fields such as the Economics of Education and Regional Economics. He is currently 2nd Vice President of the Spanish Health Economics Association (AES) and a member of the European Health Economics Association (EuHEA). He holds a PhD in Economics. His research focuses on studies related to obesity, and what determines healthcare expenditure and inequity (analysis of inequality). He regularly works with the Catalan Public Health Service (ASPCAT).

Dr David Roche holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Computer Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He has spent his professional career in three areas: teaching, research and consulting.

For the past ten years, he has worked as a lecturer in the fields of mathematics, statistics and information systems at a number of different universities. He currently combines teaching as an assistant lecturer at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona) and as an academic assistant at ESADE, though he has also taught at both undergraduate and master’s level at other universities such as the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). In terms of research, he has worked on the development of the computational and statistical side of pharmacological models and in developing and implementing models based on evolutionary computation. He also provides data analysis services as a business consultant. He has worked in companies in a variety of different sectors, including banking and publishing.

Dr Boi Ruiz holds a PhD (cum laude) from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and a degree in Hospital Management from EADA Business School.

Following a long career as a clinician, manager, senior executive in the healthcare and social healthcare sectors, university lecturer, international consultant and author of numerous books, articles and publications related to healthcare policies, healthcare planning and health service/centre management, he was named Minister of Health for the Government of Catalonia in December 2010, a position he held until January 2016. An advocate for management and public policy accountability, particularly in the field of healthcare, he pushed for the publication of these policies through the Central Bureau of Results in the Department of Health’s Quality Assessment Agency. This initiative, based on his own doctoral thesis, is the only one of its kind in Spain.

He is currently a lecturer at the Universitat Internacional de Catalonia (UIC Barcelona), where he is director of the Healthcare Management and Health Policy Chair. He is also a lecturer for the Master’s Degree in Health Centre Management at the Barcelona Online Business School (OBS), a lecturer for the Master’s Degree in Healthcare Management at the University of Barcelona and assistant lecturer at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). He also presides the Barcelona-based international consultancy firm Know How Advisers, of which he was founder. In the social realm, he is vice-president of the Human Foundation, vice-president of the Barcelona Multiple Sclerosis Foundation and a board member of the Societat d’Estudis Econòmics de Barcelona.

Dr Manuel Flores works as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona). He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2014 and has two MSc in Economics, one from Pompeu Fabra University in 2007 and the other from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2009.

Before joining UIC Barcelona, he worked for three years as an economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the areas of pensions, population ageing, inequalities, health and the labour market. He has also worked as a visiting scholar at the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as a visiting student at the Utrecht University School of Economics.

His research interests are in the areas of health economics, labour economics, the economics of ageing, human capital development and applied micro-econometrics. His research has been published in several scientific journals such as the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics and Empirical Economics. He has also worked as an external reviewer for several scientific journals, including: Aging & Society, Economics & Human Biology, Health Economics, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and PLoS ONE.

Dr Irene Sánchez is a post-doctoral researcher at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC). She has a PhD in Economics from the University of York (December 2017), where she was awarded a PhD scholarship by the UK Department of Health Policy Research Programme. The subject of her doctoral research was an analysis of the impact of providing informal care on carer wellbeing, early retirement decisions and certain health outcomes.

Her main area of research is the application of micro-econometric techniques to different areas related to Health Economics, such as informal healthcare, lifestyles and individual wellbeing.

In the past she has worked as a researcher at the Centre for Health Economics of the University of York as part of the health policy team collaborating in projects for the British Department of Health.

Dr Sánchez also holds an MSc in Economics from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (June 2011), an MA in Economic Theory and Econometrics from the Toulouse School of Economics (June 2010), and a degree in Economic Sciences from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, 2005-2009).

María Errea has a PhD in Economics from the Public University of Navarra (Pamplona). She did her postdoctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MA, USA). Her main lines of research are related to applied econometrics, quantitative and qualitative methods, in topics related to Health Economics. She has worked at the Office of Health Economics (London, UK), and as an associate professor at the Public University of Navarra. 

Her research has focused on issues related to living blood and organ donation, rare diseases, chronic diseases, and measurement of patients' health-related quality of life. 

She is currently a freelance researcher and consultant.