Dr Lavanya Diwakar MSc, MRCP

Dr Lavanya Diwakar

Institute of Applied Health Research
Honorary Research Fellow, Health Economics

Contact details

Address
Health Economics Unit
Public Health Building
College of Medical and Dental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Diwakar is a Consultant in Immunology at the University Hospitals of North Midlands.

She is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust for a PhD in Health Economics. Her project is aimed at carrying out an economic evaluation of paediatric allergy services in the West Midlands. She is looking at ways to incorporate end user preferences into planning allergy services for the West Midlands and will estimate the costs and effectiveness of various possible pathways for delivery of these services.

Lavanya is also a NICE scholar (2017-18). Her project with NICE is aimed at improving dissemination of research and modelling pathways for delivery of paediatric allergy services in the West Midlands.

Qualifications

  • Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath, Immunology) 2013
  • MSc (Health economics and Health policy), University of Birmingham 2010
  • Member of Royal College of Physicians (UK) 2004
  • General Medial Council (UK) 2001

Biography

Lavanya underwent speciality training in Adult Immunology in the West Midlands region. In 2009, she completed the MSc course in health economics and health policy at the University of Birmingham in 2010. Subsequently, she obtained a Wellcome Trust research fellowship and started her PhD in July 2013.

Lavanya’s PhD project aims to model various pathways that can be used for the delivery of Paediatric allergy services in the West Midlands and to work out the costs and effectiveness of these pathways specifically for our region. During the course of the PhD,she will learn to carry out systematic literature reviews, analyse data from the THIN and HES databases, carry out a qualitative study, a discrete choice experiment and improve her understanding of modelling.

Her research interests include Health economics, Immunology, allergy, pathways of service delivery and funding of rare diseases.

Teaching

Doctoral research

PhD title
Economic evaluation of Paediatric Allergy pathways for the West Midlands

Publications

Selected Publications:

Diwakar L, Cummins C, Lilford R, et al. Systematic review of pathways for the delivery of allergy services. BMJ open 2017;7(2):e012647.

Diwakar L, Cummins C, Ryan R, et al. Prescription rates of adrenaline auto-injectors for children in UK general practice: a retrospective cohort study. The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners 2017;67(657):e300-e05.

Hernandez-Munoz LU, Woolley SI, Luyt D, et al. Evaluation of AllergiSense Smartphone Tools for Adrenaline Injection Training. IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics 2017;21(1):272-82.

Diwakar L, Roberts TE, Cooper NA, et al. An economic evaluation of outpatient versus inpatient polyp treatment for abnormal uterine bleeding. BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology 2016;123(4):625-31.

Diwakar L, Ewan P, Huber PA, et al. The impact of national guidelines on venom immunotherapy practice in the United Kingdom. Clin Exp Allergy 2016;46(5):749-53.

Cooper NA, Clark TJ, Middleton L, et al. Outpatient versus inpatient uterine polyp treatment for abnormal uterine bleeding: randomised controlled non-inferiority study. BMJ 2015;350:h1398.

Clark TJ, Middleton LJ, Cooper NA, et al. A randomised controlled trial of Outpatient versus inpatient Polyp Treatment (OPT) for abnormal uterine bleeding. Health technology assessment 2015;19(61):1-194.

Crooks NH, Patel J, Diwakar L, et al. Icatibant in the treatment of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor-induced angioedema. Case reports in critical care 2014;2014.

Morris RK, Malin GL, Quinlan-Jones E, et al. The Percutaneous shunting in Lower Urinary Tract Obstruction (PLUTO) study and randomised controlled trial: evaluation of the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of percutaneous vesicoamniotic shunting for lower urinary tract obstruction. Health technology assessment 2013;17(59):1-232.

  1. Diwakar L, Morris RK, Barton P, et al. Evaluation of the cost effectiveness of vesico-amniotic shunting in the management of congenital lower urinary tract obstruction (based on data from the PLUTO Trial). PloS one 2013;8(12):e82564.

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