Elena is particularly interested in economic evaluation of health care technologies and interventions, clinical decision analysis and, more generally, in measurement of health and distributional aspects of health policy. 

She has expertise in economic evaluation of complex interventions, particularly those in primary care, prevention, dementia and maternity care. She has performed the economic evaluation of several interventions, including stroke, HIV, and cancer treatments. She collaborated to a research project to assess the cost-effectiveness of a Regional colorectal cancer screening programme in Italy. During the project she investigated the measurement of Quality of Life in patients undergoing screening procedures. She also developed a study to investigate the causes of the high rate of C-section during delivery in Italy and the associated costs.  

At UCL she is currently working as Research Partnership Team in the NIHR CLAHRC North Thames and she is  Deputy Lead of the Health Economics and Data  (HEAD) Theme. She is involved on a broad range of projects, including the evaluation of  new model of treatment in patients with cancer, dementia, the evaluation of the PRM to improve the NHS 111 service and the evaluation of interventions to improve orthopedics care (GIRFT). She is currently investigating the cost-utility of using mechanical thrombectomy in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke in UK and USA.