Stirling Bryan

Dr. Stirling Bryan is a health economist whose work advances economic evaluation, health technology assessment and evidence-informed health policy in Canada and internationally. His research focuses on improving the use of evidence in policy and health system decision-making, with particular emphasis on the economic evaluation of genomic technologies, learning health systems and patient-oriented research.

Dr. Bryan began his academic career in the United Kingdom with appointments at St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School and Brunel University, before joining the University of Birmingham in 1997. While at Birmingham, he led the team conducting economic analyses for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and later served on the NICE technology appraisals committee. In 2005, he was awarded a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied health technology coverage decisions.

In 2008, Dr. Bryan moved to Canada as a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Evaluation (C2E2) at Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, providing leadership for the centre until 2018. He remains a senior scientist with C2E2, where his team conducts applied and methodological research in health economics and health policy.

Dr. Bryan has played a key role in building capacity for patient-oriented research in British Columbia. In 2016, he was appointed Scientific Director of the BC SUPPORT Unit to support patient engagement in research, and in 2020 he became President of the BC Academic Health Science Network, guiding its work through consolidation with the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research until September 2021. He now serves as Chief Scientific Officer of the consolidated organization, Michael Smith Health Research BC, helping to shape provincial health research strategy and strengthen the use of research evidence in health system decision-making.