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Pressemitteilung des IfW vom 13. 6.2006
New Technology and Medical Decision Making: Normative Models and Empirical Practice
Kiel Institute hosting the first ESF-IfW Conference on The Global Health Economy
Chair: Uwe Siebert (UMIT, Hall, AT & Harvard Medical School, Boston, US)
Co-Chair: Peter Zweifel (University of Zürich, CH)
Salzau Castle (near Kiel), Germany, 4–9 October 2006
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, in cooperation with the European Science Foundation and with financial support from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Landesregierung Schleswig-Holstein through its Gesundheitsinitiative, is inviting interested scholars from medicine, health economics and other health-related fields of study to take an active part in an international research conference on „New Technology and Medical Decision Making“ that will take place on October 4–9, 2006, at Salzau Castle (near Kiel), Schleswig-Holstein’s premier cultural centre on the shore of Lake Selent, close to the Baltic coast. The program will be co-chaired by Uwe Siebert of the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology (UMIT) in Hall (Austria) and Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA) and by Peter Zweifel of the University of Zürich (Switzerland), the former President of the International Health Economics Association.
The conference agenda comprises five thematic sessions with invited presentations from the world’s leading scholars in the field and room for additional short talks from junior researchers: (1) Trends in Medical Technology – Focusing Devices, Technological Trajectories, and Forecasting; (2) The Science of Medical Decision Making – Producing and Using Information for Efficient Risk Management; (3) Medical Infrastructure, Insurance, and the Diffusion of Innovation; (4) Methods for Estimating the Causal Effect of Medical Interventions from Observational Data; and (5) Priority Setting, Health Technology Assessment, and Research Investments.
The conference objective is to initiate new research networks and to strengthen Europe’s role in the global health economy. Rapid advances in medical knowledge and technology have long been recognized as a key challenge to the theory and practice of medical decision making. 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 European research landscape in this area is still highly fragmented, with a relatively high concentration of leading-edge researchers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and a relatively low quantity of research elsewhere. Against this background, the ESF-IfW conference will serve as a focusing device, alert researchers throughout continental Europe to the pressing questions on the international agenda and help to build a pan-European research community. This is expected to add value on three levels: the academic, the policy and the practical level. There will be separate workshops on October 4, 2006, in which some of the world’s leading scholars in the field will offer specially tailored courses for fee-paying practitioners in health policy, health care provisions, and private industry.
The conference and the pre-conference workshops are motivated by the observation that institutional inertia threaten to slow down medical progress and to stifle the world’s largest and most valuable industry just as we enter the era of population aging. Setting the right incentives for the adoption of evidence-based medicine and for the implementation of efficient institutions in national health systems is hence of great social importance. The extension of European integration into this important field offers an historical window of opportunity to give the research community a greater voice in health policy. The conference will therefore explore the opportunities for more international cooperation, without denying the diversity of national traditions and approaches in health care.
The scientific program and application form are accessible on-line through the conference website that is maintained by the European Science Foundation at http://www.esf.org/conferences/sc06219. Young researchers from economics, medicine and related disciplines are invited to apply for this agenda-setting conference and contribute their own ideas and research findings for selected short talks and poster viewing sessions. Grants to cover the conference fee and a generous contribution towards travel costs will be available for the best young applicants.
For further information, please contact Mrs. Jane Dutton at the European Science Foundation. The deadline for abstract submissions and applications to participate in this conference is July 24, 2006. For inquiries about the workshops for practitioners, please contact Dr. Michael Stolpe, the Coordinator of the Kiel Institute’s Global Health Research Network.
Detailed Description of the ESF-IfW Conferences on The Global Health Economy
Fachliche Ansprechpartner:
Mrs. Jane Dutton
Phone +33 (0)3 8876 7135
jdutton@esf.orgDr. Michael Stolpe
Phone +49 (0)431 8814 246