Team
Recognised as the leading knowledge broker on the Irish reimbursement pathway for many years, our experience is that ‘on the ground’ local knowledge and insights are critical to the development of a successful HTA which optimises a positive reimbursement decision.
The AXIS team has extensive experience of all aspects of Market Access and offer a seamless and integrated service, harnessing a broad range of capabilities within one company. Our team includes highly experienced health economists, researchers, statisticians and medical writers providing a complete range of market access services for our clients.
We believe in adopting a problem solving approach for all our projects and while our focus is on the big picture, we pay the highest levels of attention to the small details to increase reimbursement success rates for our clients.
The AXIS Team
Brenda Dooley
Founder and CEO
Brenda Dooley is an expert market access strategist with 20+ years international biopharma industry experience. She established AXIS Consulting in 2012 and with over 80 bespoke reimbursement submissions now completed for the Irish authorities, AXIS Consulting has become the leading global provider of services to pharmaceutical companies seeking access for new medicines in Ireland.
Brenda Dooley
Founder and CEO
Brenda Dooley is an expert market access strategist with 20+ years international biopharma industry experience. She established AXIS Consulting in 2012 and with over 80 bespoke reimbursement submissions now completed for the Irish authorities, AXIS Consulting has become the leading global provider of services to pharmaceutical companies seeking access for new medicines in Ireland.
A member of the Minerva International Health Economics Network, Brenda has established strategic links with providers of health economics services across the UK, EU, USA and Canada. Knowing that a customised approach is fundamentally important for successful submissions to national agencies, Brenda has led AXIS Consulting’s recent expansion of market access services to Scotland and BeNeLuxAI.
Brenda holds a BA (Hons) in Business, a Diploma (Hons) in Financial Management and a MSc (Hons) in Health Economics. A member of Ireland’s Institute of Directors, Brenda is also a member of the National University of Ireland, Galway’s Investment committee having previously been a member of the University’s Risk & Audit committee.
Steve Beard
Business Insights Advisor
Steve joined AXIS in 2023 as a Business Insights Advisor with a key focus on guiding and supporting the team’s organic growth and development. Steve brings over 25 years of experience in managing the development and growth of HEOR and Market Access consulting services and delivery. The common thread running throughout his career has been providing strong leadership and driving professional development for technical and commercial consulting teams, with a key focus on establishing and maintaining close and effective collaborative partnerships with industry clients.
Steve Beard
Business Insights Manager
Steve joined AXIS in 2023 as a Business Insights Advisor with a key focus on guiding and supporting the team’s organic growth and development. Steve brings over 25 years of experience in managing the development and growth of HEOR and Market Access consulting services and delivery. The common thread running throughout his career has been providing strong leadership and driving professional development for technical and commercial consulting teams, with a key focus on establishing and maintaining close and effective collaborative partnerships with industry clients.
Steve is a firm believer that meaningful and effective collaboration in the consulting space comes only from a consistently applied philosophy of empowerment.
Joy McAleer
Quality and Process Lead
Joy McAleer is the Quality and Process Lead at AXIS Consulting. Joy brings in excess of 30 years’ experience in management consulting, with a specific focus on the dynamic of organisational improvement through adoption of strong programme and project management.
Joy McAleer
Quality & Process Lead
Joy McAleer is the Process Improvement Manager at AXIS Consulting. Joy brings in excess of 30 years’ experience in management consulting, with a specific focus on the dynamic of organisational improvement through adoption of strong programme and project management.
Working originally in IT, Joy was responsible for the implementation of IT systems of scale, supporting end users in changing operating practices. After moving into consultancy Joy deepened her experience in programme and project management, strategy development and performance management, engaging with teams both in process and skills development through facilitation and training.
As Process Improvement Manager, Joy is responsible for supporting continuous improvement in how AXIS delivers on client’s requirements through end-to-end lifecycle with project management, client engagement and core consulting skills.
Joy holds a BSc, MSc, PGCE, along with Professional Qualifications in Risk, Programme, Project Management from the Association for Project Management (APM) which is the chartered body for the project profession. Joy is member of the British Psychological Society.
Caroline McNeill
Business Operations Lead
Caroline McNeill is the Business Operations Lead at AXIS Healthcare Consulting Ltd. and brings over 15 years of administrative experience in Office Management and Accounts, Human Resources and Mentoring. Caroline is primarily involved in the effective day to day running of the business, assisting in the development and implementation of company policies and procedures; managing and overseeing the administration of client contracts, company events and communications and policies, programs and practices within the company. Delivering outstanding customer service has always been an essential part of a day’s work for Caroline and she wants to ensure each one of AXIS’s clients has a positive experience.
Caroline McNeill
Business Operations Lead
Caroline holds an Honours B.A. in Geography and Sociology and Politics, Higher Diplomas in Arts Management and Practice and Adult Education along with qualifications in Coaching and Mentoring, Digital Marketing, Employment Law, Team Leadership, Project Management and Health and Safety.
Carl Prescott
Head of HTA Consulting (UK)
Carl Prescott joined AXIS in 2023 after 13 years at NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), where most recently he was the Senior Technical Adviser for Methods, supporting the implementation of the NICE manual for technology evaluation. He also worked on Health Technology Appraisals (supporting multidisciplinary committees in their decision-making about whether new medicines should be recommended for use in the NHS), NHS England specialised commissioning policies (where he supported NHS England to develop policy propositions for specialised commissioning funding decisions), and outcomes for Quality Standards and QoF (Quality and Outcomes Framework).
Carl Prescott
Head of HTA Consulting UK
Head of HTA Consulting, UK
Carl has a deep understanding of what it takes to ensure patients get timely access to cutting-edge health technologies that improve quality of life. This includes expert knowledge of NICE’s processes and methods, their key internal and external stakeholders, and how best to navigate complex NHS decision-making networks. In his role at AXIS, Carl uses this knowledge to support companies in their engagement with NICE to help ensure a win-win, both for the NHS (getting speedy access to cost-effective new treatments) and clients (fair reimbursement for companies driving these innovative treatments).
Allister Upton
Head of HTA Consulting (Ire)
Allister Upton joined AXIS in March 2024. Allister joins the team as a Senior Director to support our client’s journey’s through the Irish pricing & reimbursement processes and provides strategic advice helping address key market access challenges faced by companies in Ireland.
Having worked in Market Access for 15 years developing his expertise in creating value propositions across the whole lifecycle for pharmaceutical brands, Allister is passionate about creating win/win solutions for payers, patients, and pharmaceutical companies. In the early phase of his career in Market Access, Allister worked on UK HTAs and with National Market Access models and value propositions, and then took a secondment to work full time as a payer in the NHS where he developed return on investment models for integrated care. He returned to the pharmaceutical industry working for Lundbeck on Irish specific health technology assessments alongside his UK responsibilities. During his career at Lundbeck Allister progressed to director level as Head of Global Market Access, a role which included the development of HTA submissions across all EU/Global markets including Ireland.
Allister Upton
Head of HTA Consulting, Ireland.
Having worked in Market Access for 15 years developing his expertise in creating value propositions across the whole lifecycle for pharmaceutical brands, Allister is passionate about creating win/win solutions for payers, patients, and pharmaceutical companies. In the early phase of his career in Market Access, Allister worked on UK HTAs and with National Market Access models and value propositions, and then took a secondment to work full time as a payer in the NHS where he developed return on investment models for integrated care. He returned to the pharmaceutical industry working for Lundbeck on Irish specific health technology assessments alongside his UK responsibilities. During his career at Lundbeck Allister progressed to director level as Head of Global Market Access, a role which included the development of HTA submissions across all EU/Global markets including Ireland.
Allister subsequently spent 12 months as senior commercial leader in Ireland, navigating pricing and reimbursement with the HSE – CPU with biosimilars.
More recently, Allister spent 3 years based in Dublin in a global Market Access role for Alimera Sciences, managing NCPE submissions amongst other global pricing and reimbursement submissions. Allister has experience in CVD, diabetes, mental health, women’s health, generic pharma, nutrition, biosimilars and medical devices. He is excellent at developing logical value propositions and finding clear strategy to provide payers with confidence that medicines are health economically viable and is looking forward to working closely with all our much-valued clients at AXIS.
Annie Barnes
HTA Value & Strategy Lead (UK)
Annie Barnes joined AXIS as a Principal Consultant to lead the HTA Value and Access Strategy (UK) team in January 2024.
Annie, brings a wealth of experience to our new UK team having worked in HEOR consultancy since 2008. Annie’s most recent role prior to joining us was as a Senior Director, where she was responsible for large multi-technical team projects and ensuring the projects met both the client strategic objectives and the needs of the business. Annie led on a wide range of projects from large Global cost-effectiveness modelling programmes of work, through to smaller HTA review projects and publications and worked on a large number of UK HTA submission projects (NICE/SMC and NCPE) in a range of indications. Annie also delivered training sessions to clients on the UK HTA processes and process changes.
Now Recruiting
HTA Modelling & Analytics Lead (UK)
Karen Stanford
Principal Consultant
Karen joined AXIS as a Principal Consultant – Medical Writer in July 2024. Karen is a solutions-focussed, strategic medical and value communications specialist (PhD, Neuroscience), bringing to the AXIS team around 25 years of pharma and agency experience. Karen is a competitive intelligence and medical narrative expert, and has dedicated her career to improving patient access to medicine. She has particular interest and expertise in UK and Ireland HTA submissions, GVDs, landscape analysis, and value messaging. Karen also has a wealth of publications and advisory board experience. In over 20 years, Karen has worked across a wide range of therapy areas, with key expertise in oncology, ophthalmology, immunology, rare diseases, and orphan indications. Karen is a communications expert, a team player, and effective collaborator.
Sam Taylor
Senior Consultant
Sam joined AXIS as a Senior Consultant – Health Economics in July 2024. Sam is a super motivated Health Economist with 5 years of experience in HEOR consultancy, a PhD in neuroscience and experience in a broad range of client-facing projects including the development of global cost-effective and budget impact models, HTA submission writing, market access, literature reviews, and business development. Sam’s previous roles covered a very broad range of HEOR projects, from systematic literature reviews to the adaptation of an Excel model into an iPad app and the re-designing and building of a client-facing Microsoft Excel model from the ground up, which included a large amount of VBA coding for the navigation and modelling functionality. As well as developing cost effectiveness and budget impact models Sam also contributed to NICE technology appraisals for antimicrobials, and for a tumour-agnostic therapy and led and supported cost-effectiveness and budget impact model country adaptations, both within Europe and globally.
Manpreet Kaur
Senior Consultant
Manpreet joined AXIS in 2023 as a Senior Consultant. Manpreet has over 7 years of experience in the field of healthcare analytics. Her work with health economics consultancies majorly includes development and adaptation of economic models and dossiers to support reimbursement of new products. She worked with international affiliates (over 15 countries including European & Asian countries and UK) to produce health economic solutions for regional use.
In recent years, she utilises her skills and experience in developing and managing reimbursement submissions for Ireland.
She is extremely passionate and solution-oriented with a passion for health economics and her experience in economic consulting provides and delivers health economics expertise to support HTA submissions.
Mohamed Zein
Consultant
Mohamed joined AXIS in 2023 as our Health Economics & Access Junior Manager. Mohamed combines his unique skills and knowledge of Pharmacy, and his technical abilities in Health Economics and Decision Modelling with his experience in Market Access to support clients with modelling requirements such as cost-effectiveness models and budget-impact analyses, undertaking strategic HTA decisions, developing submissions, and supporting in market access, assessing barriers to uptake, and implementing strategies to achieve successful reimbursements.
Mohamed Zein
Consultant
Mohamed joined AXIS in 2023 as our Health Economics & Access Junior Manager. Mohamed has dual degrees, with an MSc (Hons) in Pharmacy from Kingston University in London, and an MSc in Health Economics and Decision Modelling from the University of Sheffield.
Mohamed combines his unique skills and knowledge of Pharmacy, and his technical abilities in Health Economics and Decision Modelling with his experience in Market Access to support clients with modelling requirements such as cost-effectiveness models and budget-impact analyses, undertaking strategic HTA decisions, developing submissions, and supporting in market access, assessing barriers to uptake, and implementing strategies to achieve successful reimbursements.
Before joining AXIS, Mohamed practised as a clinical pharmacist for 5-years. During which, he simultaneously worked in health economics and market access for 2.5 years, and has a vast amount of experience, comprising the development of high-quality submission dossiers to stakeholders in the U.K, Europe, and US Markets, covering a multitude of therapeutic areas, and includes orphan and ultra-orphan disease technologies. Mohamed has also had research published in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences such as ISPOR.
Jennifer Leroy
Senior Consultant
Jennifer joined AXIS as a Consultant in 2023. She holds a Master of Pharmacy degree from the University of Portsmouth. After qualifying, Jennifer worked for a number of years as a community pharmacist, and she maintains her registration with the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI).
Upon completion of an MSc in Health Economics from the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), Jennifer worked as a Health Technology Assessor at the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE).
Coupled with her wealth of experience in community pharmacy, Jennifer is inspired by her first-hand perspective of a new treatment reaching a patient. She is motivated by these experiences to provide access to new and innovative treatments to many more patients in the future.
Katherine McAllister
Consultant
Katherine joined AXIS in 2023 as an experienced medical writer. PhD level trained, Katherine utilises her previous academic and scientific skillset in cancer research to translate complex clinical data into a clear and robust value story for our clients. Widely published, she has an in-depth understanding of adapting her medical writing skills across all sectors including academia, reimbursement agencies and industry.
Katherine is fundamentally driven by a passion for developing strategies which integrate innovative personalised therapies into health systems with the ultimate goal of improving patients’ lives.
Katherine McAllister
Consultant
Katherine joined AXIS in 2023 as an experienced medical writer. PhD level trained, Katherine utilises her previous academic and scientific skillset in cancer research to translate complex clinical data into a clear and robust value story for our clients. Widely published, she has an in-depth understanding of adapting her medical writing skills across all sectors including academia, reimbursement agencies and industry.
Katherine is fundamentally driven by a passion for developing strategies which integrate innovative personalised therapies into health systems with the ultimate goal of improving patients’ lives. This passion led her to move from academia to consulting where, before joining AXIS, she worked for the UK base of an international market access company. Her work here was across a spectrum of projects and deliverables including value proposition development, HTA submission critique and review, and delivery of systematic literature reviews.
She has a PhD in Cancer Research from the University of Ulster, a Masters from the University of Ulster specialising in Biomedical Science, and a BSc in Biomedical Science. Katherine is also currently undertaking an MBA at The Open University.
David McLoughlin
Senior Associate
David joined AXIS in 2021 where he now provides tailored technical support to clients on a range of projects including rapid reviews, health technology assessments, micro-costing studies and other market access specific research projects. He is driven by the goal of providing patients with access to new and innovative treatment options, which in turn can have a significant impact on the health outcomes experienced by patients across a variety of healthcare settings.
David McLoughlin
Associate, Health Economics & Access
David is an Associate, Health Economics & Access at AXIS Consulting, having joined the company in 2021. David provides tailored technical support to our team on a range of projects including rapid reviews, health technology assessments, micro-costing studies and other reimbursement specific research projects. He is driven by the goal of providing patients with access to new and innovative treatment options, which in turn can have a significant impact on the health outcomes experienced by patients across a variety of healthcare settings.
David combines his unique expertise in the pharmacy setting in Ireland with his theoretical knowledge of health economics to ensure that each and every output is delivered to the highest technical standard and captures the nuances of the Irish market. He has over 8 years of experience working in community pharmacy, gaining key insights into the medicines access and pharmaceutical distributions processes in Ireland. David also has a keen interest in academic research, having in more recent years conducted research on the role of economic evaluations in the reimbursement of cancer medications in Ireland.
David holds both a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Geography, Sociology, and Political Science, and a Higher Diploma (H.Dip) in Economic Science from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has also recently completed an MSc. in Health Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Emer Gribbon
Senior Associate
Emer Gribbon is a Junior Data Analyst at AXIS. As part of the AXIS technical team, Emer provides data analysis support on economic models for health technology assessments and rapid reviews, as well as analytical expertise on supportive evidence studies.
She is motivated by the opportunity to improve patients’ lives through the innovative treatments they receive.
Emer Gribbon
Associate
Emer Gribbon is a Junior Data Analyst at AXIS. As part of the AXIS technical team, Emer provides data analysis support on economic models for health technology assessments and rapid reviews, as well as analytical expertise on supportive evidence studies. She is motivated by the opportunity to improve patients’ lives through the innovative treatments they receive.
With previous experience in data driven diagnostics, Emer has developed a proficiency across a range of data analysis techniques including descriptive analysis, predictive modelling, regression analysis and machine learning. She utilises this skillset to optimise reimbursement submissions and ensure rigorous economic and analytical output is generated.
Emer holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Economics with French from Queen’s University Belfast and has recently graduated with a MSc in Data Analytics also from Queen’s University.
Emma McGrath
Junior Associate
Emma McGrath is AXIS’ newest team member and joined AXIS as a Junior Associate after completing her internship as part of her Master’s in Health Economics with the University of Galway in August 2024.
Karen Dawe
Medical Writer
Karen is a Health Technology Consultant and strategist with an interdisciplinary background spanning academia and industry.
As a Technical Communications Specialist with extensive experience across multiple therapy areas in academia, industry, and the NHS she is skilled at translating large amounts of complex technical information into actionable product insights and a compelling commercial story.
Professor Nils Gutacker
Professor and Senior Health Economist
Dr Nils Gutacker is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York, and a freelance health economist with AXIS Consulting. He has over 10 years of experience working as an applied health economists and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics in this field.
Nils Gutacker
Health Economist
Dr Nils Gutacker is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York, and a freelance health economist with AXIS Consulting. He has over 10 years of experience working as an applied health economists and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics in this field. Nils is an expert in the statistical analysis of large electronic health record databases (‘big data’), quality of life measurement, and economic modelling.
Nils holds a BSc in Medical Management from University of Duisburg-Essen, as well as an MSc in Health Economics and a PhD in Economics, both from the University of York. He is a member of the EuroQol Group Association.
Andrew Davies
Senior Health Economist
Andrew (Andy) has an MSc in Health Economics from the University of York and twenty years’ experience in health economics, the majority of which has been spent in senior modelling roles at prominent health economics consultancies including Oxford Outcomes, now ICON, where he was until recently Principal Health Economist. In addition to his consulting work Andy is a senior health economist in the Health Economics Health Technology Assessment (HEHTA) team at the University of Glasgow.
Fauve Aylmer
Assistant Clinical Researcher
Claire Nolan
Finance Manager
Claire Nolan is the Finance Manager at AXIS Healthcare Consulting Ltd. Claire has worked in Finance for the past 25 years. Prior to joining AXIS, Claire worked in a variety of different sectors along with running her own business. The knowledge and experience she brings to AXIS help ensure efficient and effective management of the Financial Department.
Claire Nolan
Finance Manager
Claire Nolan is the Finance Manager at AXIS Healthcare Consulting Ltd. Claire has worked in Finance for the past 25 years. Prior to joining AXIS, Claire worked in a variety of different sectors along with running her own business. The knowledge and experience she brings to AXIS help ensure efficient and effective management of the Financial Department.
As head of the Finance team, Claire is responsible for supporting proposal development, cashflow management, payroll and financial Reporting. She enjoys analysing data to guide future decisions to ensure the efficient running of AXIS.
Claire holds a Diploma in Tax along with Professional Qualifications in Accountancy.