Initiatives and evaluations: the life of a lymphoedema researcher

As a health economist working for the College of Human and Health Sciences at Swansea University, I have been helping Lymphoedema Network Wales (LNW) with several service evaluations for the past 5 years.

LNW is made up of a small but passionate team of people who are dedicated and committed to people in Wales living with lymphoedema and who are determined to look at inefficiencies and inequities in the care delivered.

Since 2014 LNW has, therefore, pursued the local university health board for monies to help evaluate its services. The network has done this to build up a body of evidence to support its innovative ideas and more effective—and cost-effective!—ways of approaching and treating lymphoedema.

This body of work started with a service evaluation of the entire Wales-wide network. The results of this study showed that the service had brought considerable cost savings and efficiencies across the network and this data formed the basis of LNW's raft of evaluations that have now taken place (Humphreys and Thomas, 2017).