Education and Training

Rafael completed his Doctor in Dental Surgery degree at the Sao Paulo State University (FOSJC-UNESP), worked in the Brazilian Public Health System as a family dentist and later as oral health coordinator, where he had his first exposure to HTA and has been interested in this field ever since. He completed a graduate degree in Health Economics and HTA at Oswaldo Cruz German Hospital / Economic Research Institute Foundation (HAOC/FIPE) and took further courses on Evidence Based Medicine and Health Economics Evaluations. He also tutored for the distance education course “HTA for Brazilian Healthcare System Managers”.

Research Interests and Expertise

Rafael is a member of a large multidisciplinary international team evaluating zika virus mitigation strategies using data-driven simulation models. His current research is on health-related quality of life in syndromes associated with Zika virus infection and healthcare costs associated with the infection in Colombia. He is also interested in the area of health economic evaluation and modelling, in particular their application to inform policy decisions.

Projects:

• Derivation and validation of the Can3T Score risk-score, a triage tool to classify patients referred for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) according to their risk of preprocedural adverse events
• Development of appropriate wait time benchmarks for patients referred for TAVI
• Estimation of additional health system capacity needed to achieve wait time benchmarks for patients referred for TAVI in Ontario