Victor Roy
Victor Roy is a Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).

He is a co-founder and served as Executive Director of GlobeMed, a network of students now at over 50 university campuses partnering with communities around the world to improve health of people living in poverty. He earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar and his M.D. at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine as a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow.
Research summary
Victor’s research into the political economy of biomedical innovation investigates the financing, valuation and accessibility of new technologies for health.
He has published on the influence of financialisation in drug pricing and treatment access. He is currently studying the valuation practices used by an array of economic actors in drug development.
Much of this research has focussed on new breakthrough medicines for hepatitis C. Victor also explores organisational experiments that aim to bring public health and human rights from the margins to the centre of innovation strategies.
Victor will be leading IIPP’s work on how health innovation can be more mission-oriented to realise therapeutic and public health advances that ensure accessibility for patients and health systems.
Selected publications
- Mazzucato, M and Roy, V. 2018. “Rethinking Value in Health Innovation: From Mystifications Towards Prescriptions.” Journal of Economic Policy Reform 73(2):1–19.
- Roy, Victor and Lawrence King. 2016. Betting on Hepatitis C: How Financial Speculation in Drug Development Influences Access to Medicines. BMJ 354:i3718.
- Roy, Victor and Lawrence King. 2016. A Focus on Acquisitions and Buybacks. BMJ i3718.
- Roy, Victor, Luke Hawksbee, and Lawrence King. 2016. Factors Influencing Prescription Drug Costs in the United States. JAMA 316(22):2431–31.
- Forthcoming book chapter "A Crisis for Cures? Tracing Assetization and Value in Biomedical Innovation" in Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism. Edited by Birch, K., Muniesa, F. MIT Press. 2020.
- Mazzucato, M, Roy, V. (2017). Rethinking Value in Health Innovation: from mystifications towards prescriptions. IIPP Working Paper Series, 2017-04.
- Victor Roy, David Chokshi, Stephen Kissler, and Prabhjot Singh. 2016. Making Hepatitis C a Rare Disease in the United States. Health Affairs.