Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a significant human pathogen affecting nearly 3% of the world’s population, and is a leading cause of chronic liver diseases including cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Since the implementation of blood screening, HCV is predominantly transmitted between intravenous drug users. A recent revolution in HCV antiviral therapy has resulted in several direct-acting antivirals (DAA) being used in combination to treat HCV with high efficacy. Much of the focus of HCV research has now switched to assessing if these new DAAs could contain the HCV epidemic. In order to assess this we need to document the historical trends of the HCV epidemic and then model the future trends with the implementation of effective DAAs. To infer the historical trends of HCV in the western world, bayesian phylogenetic analysis was performed on full-length HCV sequences isolated from North American and Australian cohorts between 2004 to 2012. Reconstruction of the HCV epidemic in both Australia and North America showed an exponential growth between 1955 – 1980 in both continents, which then stabilized in late 20th century. These estimated trends were coincident with the epidemic rise in injecting drug use in this period. To estimate future trends of HCV infection and disease burden an individual-based mathematical model (IBM) was developed to further describe HCV transmission dynamics and trends in a localised high-risk prison setting. Currently, the impact of DAA based prevention strategies and cost-effectiveness is underway.