Dr Ka Keat Lim, MPharm, MSc, PhD

Profile

I am a health economist at Health Economics & Policy Research Unit (HEPRU), within the Centre for Evaluation & Methods. Graduated with MPharm from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, I started my career as a pharmacist in Malaysia, and later worked as a researcher at Malaysia’s Institute for Clinical Research, before pursuing MSc International Health Policy (Health Economics) at London School of Economics & Political Science, and PhD at Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore. After my PhD, I worked as a research fellow at King’s College London (KCL), before joining HEPRU as a lecturer in 2024.

My research aims to improve health and social care services and population health. I work with researchers, clinicians, patients, carers and policy makers to assess the value of adopting an intervention or the value of investing in further research of an innovation. I am particularly interested and aspire to be an expert in economic evaluation of screening and preventive interventions. Please reach out if I may add value to your work.

Besides research, I also teach economic evaluation in Masters modules and in workshops. I have supervised undergraduate and Masters dissertations and am open for PhD supervision. I am currently an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. In 2023, while at KCL, I was nominated for its university-wide Teaching Award and the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine’s Staff Award (Research Guidance and Mentorship Category).

Outside of work, I actively participate in the Professional Society for Health Economics & Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and International Health Economics Association (IHEA). I currently serve as a committee member in ISPOR Precision Medicine & Advanced Therapy Special Interest Group (SIG), ISPOR Europe Conference Programme (2023 and 2024) and IHEA Early Career Researchers SIG. I am also a member of the UK NIHR Pre-doctoral Funding Committee.

Research

Research Interests:

I am interested in assessing the value of screening, preventive and risk-stratified interventions, through trial-based or model-based economic evaluations.

Publications

Please click through to see a complete list of Ka Keat's publications.

Featured publications

Lim KK, Koleva-Kolarova R, Kamaruzaman HF, Kamil AA, Chowienczyk P, Wolfe CDA, Fox-Rushby J. Genetic-guided pharmacotherapy for coronary artery disease: a systematic and critical review of economic evaluations. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2024;13:e030058.https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.123.030058

Yong ASJ, Lim KK, Fox-Rushby J, Ismail F, Hamzah E, Cheong MWL, Teoh SL. A longitudinal evaluation of advanced cancer patients' preferences for quality of life and survival in Malaysia: A discrete choice experiment. Value in Health. 2023 Sep 21:S1098-3015(23)03125-X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jval.2023.08.009

Lim KK, Koleva-Kolarova R (Co-first authors), Fox-Rushby J. A Comparison of the Content and Consistency of Methodological Quality and Transferability Checklists for Reviewing Model-Based Economic Evaluations. PharmacoEconomics 2022; 40(10): 989-1003. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-022-01173-3

Kwan YH, Lim KK (Co-first authors), Fong W, Goh H, Ng L, Haaland B, Phang JK, Low LL, Yeo JG, Huang F, Leung YY, Thumboo J, Østbye T. Risk of malignancies in patients with spondyloarthritis treated with biologics compared with those treated with non-biologics: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Therapeutic Advances in Musculoskeletal Disease. 2020; 12:1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/1759720X20925696

Lim KK, Yoon SY, Mohd Taib NA, Shabaruddin FH, Dahlui M, Woo YL, Thong MK, Teo SH, Chaiyakunapruk N. Is BRCA mutation testing cost effective for early-stage breast cancer patients compared to routine clinical surveillance? The case of an upper middle-income country in Asia. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy 2018; 16(3): 395 – 406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-018-0384-8