IfW Press Release September 15, 2006

Press Invitation on the occasion of the first ESF-IfW Conference on The Global Health Economy

New Technology and Medical Decision Making: Normative Models and Empirical Practice

with Pre-Conference Workshops for Young Researchers, Practitioners and Policy Makers in Health Care, Developers and Regulators of Medical Technology and other Experts from the Biomedical Industry.

Conference-Chairs: Uwe Siebert (UMIT, Hall, AT & Harvard Medical School, Boston, US) and Peter Zweifel (University of Zürich, CH)

On the occasion of the first ESF-IfW Conference on The Global Health Economy, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy at the University of Kiel is pleased to invite all interested journalists to join us for two closely related research events:

An international panel discussion on

"New Technology and Medical Decision Making:
Ethics, Incentives, Regulation, and the Role of Health Policy,"

which will take place on Sunday, October 8, 2006, from 03:30 pm until 05:15 pm at Salzau Castle near Kiel;

A set of Pre-Conference-Workshops with five thematic modules on Health Care Practice, Valuation Methods, Information Technology, Decision Theory, and Genomics-based Medicine, that are offered on Wednesday, October 4, 2006, at Salzau Castle.

In addition, we would like to encourage all interested journalists to register their participation in the main conference on „New Technology and Medical Decision Making: Normative Models and Empirical Practice,“ which will be held on October 4–9, 2006, at Salzau Castle near Kiel. You are invited to use the opportunity for in-depth interviews with the world’s leading scholars at the cross-section of medicine and economics. The detailed conference program, full organizational details and the electronic registration form are accessible through the conference website that is maintained by the European Science Foundation.

The objective of this agenda-setting international conference, with financial support from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the State Government of Schleswig-Holstein through its Gesundheitsinitiative, is to establish a unique forum for researchers from a variety of health-related disciplines and practitioners of health care who have the capacity to make substantial contributions for a better quality of medical decision making. In this way, we hope to initiate new research networks and collaborative research projects for the coming years.

Rapid advances in medical knowledge and technology have long been recognized as a key challenge to the theory and practice of medical decision making. However, the organizational and structural adjustments that national health systems throughout continental Europe have made to address this challenge fall short in substantial ways of what leading researchers have found to be required in order to achieve an efficient allocation of health care resources. From an economic point of view, the need to revise and update decision making rules as new knowledge and diagnostic and therapeutic choices become available represents an investment problem – both in the management of individual patients and in the management of medical technology at the systemic level.

The conference agenda comprises the following five thematic sessions:

• Trends in Medical Technology – Focusing Devices, Technological Trajectories, and Forecasting;
• The Science of Medical Decision Making – Producing and Using Information for Efficient Risk Management;
• Medical Infrastructure, Insurance, and the Diffusion of Innovation;
• Methods for Estimating the Causal Effect of Medical Interventions from Observational Data; und
• Priority Setting, Health Technology Assessment, and Research Investments.

The panel discussion on October 8 are to focus on the efficient supply and on the quality of health care amid rapid technological change, thus complementing the often too narrow focus of the public discussion on health care finance in Germany. The panel discussion will be moderated by Professor J.- Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg (University of Hanover) and is open to all members of the media and the public. We are confident the strong presence of foreign experts will help us find new ways of managing the rapid change in medical technology on which modern health systems are based more efficiently than in the past. To participate in the panel discussion, please register separately by Email addressed to Ms. Sonja Petermann at sonja.petermann@ifw-kiel.de.

For more information, contact:

Anne Blondeel-Oman, European Science Foundation
Phone +33 (0)3 8876-7135
ablondeel@esf.org

Dr. Michael Stolpe, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Phone +49 (431) 8814-246