Drummond, Michael

Michael Drummond is a well-known United Kingdom health economist and an expert in healthcare technology assessment. Drummond is a professor of [Page 322]economics at the University of York and the former director of that university's Centre for Health Economics. He is a prolific writer on the economic evaluations of healthcare treatments and programs, including the following: care of the elderly, neonatal intensive care, immunization programs, services provided to people with AIDS, eye care problems, and pharmaceuticals.

Born in 1948, Drummond attended the University of Birmingham and earned a bachelor's degree in industrial metallurgy in 1970 and a master's degree in commerce and business administration in 1972. Drummond originally considered pursuing a doctoral degree in industrial relations. However, instead, he took advantage of a teaching opportunity in public-sector management at the University of Aston in Birmingham. While teaching a class in quantitative research administration, he became interested in the emerging field of health economics.

Drummond was a research fellow in health economics at the University of York from 1975 to 1978. He left to become a lecturer in health services management at the University of Birmingham. After receiving his doctoral degree in economics in 1983 from the University of York, Drummond became a visiting associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In 1984, he returned to the University of Birmingham as a senior lecturer and assistant director of the university's Health Services Management Centre. He served as the director of that center from 1986 to 1990. In 1990, Drummond accepted the position of professor of economics and became the director of the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. He served as the director of that center until 2005.

Drummond has served as a consultant to a number of organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO). He also was the project leader of the European Union Project on the Methodology of Economic Appraisal of Health Technology. Drummond also has served on the board of directors of the International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care (ISTAHC) and was the president of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

Drummond is a prolific researcher and writer. He has authored or coauthored two major textbooks and more than 500 scientific journal articles on various topics. His most noted book is Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Progammes. He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including Pharmacoeconomics, British Journal of Medical Economics, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, and the European Journal of Health Economics.

In his long career, Drummond has received numerous awards and honors. In 2004, he was awarded the Avedis Donabedian Lifetime Achievement Award by the ISPOR—that organization's highest award. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the City University, London.

Currently, Drummond continues to work on the methods and practices of economic evaluations in healthcare. He also chairs a guidelines review panel for the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

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