Seeing healthcare differently: Student reflections from the NIHR Health Economics Internship
15 April 2026
Three students – Abbie Simpson (University of Glasgow), Ashish Singh (University of Oxford) and Anika Gogia (King’s College London) – reflect on the NIHR Health Economics Internship they undertook last summer at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS), University of Oxford. Coming from backgrounds in medicine and psychology, they each brought different perspectives to the programme. In this Q&A blog, they share on their motivations for applying, what they learned and how the experience has influenced their future ambitions.
About the authors
Abbie Simpson is a fifth-year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) student at the University of Glasgow.
Ashish Singh is a second-year medical student at Balliol College, University of Oxford.
Anika Gogia is a third-year psychology student at King’s College London.
Why did you apply for the internship and what did you learn?
Abbie: As a senior medical student, I had become disillusioned by the persistent lack of funding in our hospitals. I undertook my NIHR Health Economics Internship to understand why resources are stretched so thin and to explore how I might integrate this awareness into my future career. I came away with a clear sense that a career in academia and health economics aligns with both my values and aspirations.
Abbie pictured at the Radcliffe Primary Care Building
Ashish: The internship was a transformative experience. As a medical student, I found it fascinating to uncover a new side to drug approval that I previously didn't realise existed. This revealed a complex world that sits at the intersection of health, philosophy, mathematics and modelling to calculate the long-term cost-effectiveness of interventions.
Anika: Coming from a psychology background, this was my first real exposure to health economics – a discipline that completely reframed how I think about healthcare, fairness and decision-making. What stood out most to me was how analytical and human the field is at the same time. Every dataset, model and assumption represents real people and real consequences.
What project did you work on?
Abbie: My main project focused on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. It deepened my personal understanding of these conditions. It reinforced that my academic work could contribute meaningfully to improving care for patients and families affected by neurodegenerative disease. In 2025, economic literacy is a critical skill for doctors. If we are to protect the NHS and advocate effectively for our patients, clinicians must engage with health economics and policy. This internship has given me both the insight and the conviction to do exactly that. I would definitely encourage everyone to apply!
Ashish: My main project was evaluating the methodological challenges of economic evaluations in children's mental health. I found this topic of research particularly fascinating in discovering that there is no validated instrument to measure Quality of Life (QoL) in children and adolescents suffering from mental health conditions. Many studies often choose an ill-defined comparator and adopt a very short time horizon to calculate costs and benefits across. These issues underscore the need for more robust methodologies in this vital area of research.
Anika: My main project focused on care inequalities among older adults living with cognitive impairment and estimating the investment needed to reduce unmet care needs. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the Healthy Cognitive Ageing Project (HCAP), I worked on merging datasets and running preliminary analyses in Stata. I loved seeing how behavioural, cognitive and demographic insights could contribute to shaping data-driven policies in dementia care.
Anika delivering a presentation on her project
How has the internship shaped your perspective and future plans?
Abbie: The General Medical Council’s Outcomes for Graduates highlights that medical education should not only ensure clinical competence but also foster an understanding of the wider systems in which healthcare operates. Today’s medical students face uncertainty about the NHS’s future, political turbulence and an increasing workload fuelled by defensive practice. During my internship, discussions on cost-conscious decision-making, including case studies such as lecanemab and esketamine, illuminated the evidence, ethics and rationale underpinning these complex funding choices. My internship replaced my frustration towards these choices with understanding, and my cynicism with curiosity.
This broader perspective has already shaped my approach to clinical medicine. I feel more able to engage patients in transparent discussions about how and why certain treatment decisions are made, and to appreciate hospital initiatives aimed at improving efficiency and sustainability. I also feel empowered to share this knowledge with my peers, to advocate for meaningful change and to do so from a position of informed understanding.
Ashish: The NIHR internship lectures and seminars helped me become more familiar with how approaches like trial-based economic evaluations and Markov modelling can be used to tackle the nuanced issue of drug approvals. Building on this understanding, the critical appraisal of NICE's recent rejection of Lecanemab and Esketamine has further solidified my insights. I now understand that a drug company's presented cost-effectiveness isn't everything. Factors such as barriers to implementation, underlying modelling assumptions and population characteristics are all equally crucial in decision-making.
Anika: As a psychology student, I’ve always been interested in understanding the human side of decision-making – why people think, feel and act the way they do. During this internship, I realised that health economics asks similar questions, but on a broader, societal scale. It looks at how systems make decisions for populations, how limited resources are distributed and how those choices shape people’s lives. Seeing that link made the field feel familiar but transformative.
What did you take away from the internship overall?
Abbie: The internship not only enriched my academic and professional understanding, but it also transformed me personally. Being surrounded by researchers, mentors and peers from a wide range of disciplines – all deeply committed to their fields and to the education of others – gave me a new perspective on what academic life can offer.
The perceived barriers that previously discouraged me from pursuing academia seemed to dissolve, and I began to approach questions with curiosity rather than hesitation. For the first time, I allowed myself to ask, ‘what if’ and ‘why not.’
Ashish: I found the internship experience invaluable. I have not only realised that health economics is a field that I want to further contribute to in the future but also, I met so many amazing people who work at the intersection of research and healthcare. This has further inspired me to pursue my goal of becoming an academic clinician, as conversations with DPhil students and senior academics at NDPCHS made it much clearer to me how I can make this possible.
Ashish (left) pictured at a meal with NIHR interns and NDPCHS staff
Anika: I left the NIHR internship with new technical skills, deeper intellectual clarity and a conviction that academic research can be a powerful vehicle for social impact. This experience solidified my desire to remain in academia and continue exploring how research can drive real-world change. Most of all, what made this experience special was my peers and supervisors who were so supportive, encouraging and passionate about making a difference. Their guidance helped me grow both intellectually and personally.
NIHR interns experiencing Oxford
Across their different backgrounds, all three students highlight a shared takeaway: health economics provides a crucial framework for understanding how healthcare systems function and how decisions are made.
From developing technical skills in modelling and data analysis to gaining insight into ethical and policy considerations, the NIHR Health Economics internship offered a deep and nuanced perspective on healthcare, and will shape how Abbie, Ashish and Anika approach their future careers.
Click here to read more about the NIHR Health Economics internship programme for 2026. To read more about the experience of the internship, click here to read Leyi Pan's blog.
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