Our November Health TechNet meeting focused on Comparative effectiveness research (determining which treatments are more effective than others) and translational research (exploring how to get research findings into practice more quickly) which are two topics that are gaining significantly more attention in the wake of healthcare reform.
The meeting featured the presentations of Jack Hadley, PhD, Associate Dean, Professor, and researcher at George Mason University; Ajoy Prabhu , Head of Marketing Operations at the Office of Technology Transfer of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Jonathan Bor, Senior Editor of Health Affairs; Former Congressman Greg Laughlin and Mr. Craig Saperstein from Pillsbury's Government Relations group.
Mr. Bor provided us with an introduction to Comparative Effectiveness and referenced the recently published articles on this subject in Health Affairs. Mr. Hadley provided us with an overview on the uses of observational data to support comparative effectiveness research, while Mr. Prabhu talked about translational research in this environment.
Mssrs. Laughlin and Saperstein provided us with their analysis of the results of the recent elections and their effects on healthcare reform.
The meeting also featured a brief presentation by one of our members: Smart Perfusion, LLC. George Barr and George Blanar gave us a summary of the company and its products.
The presentations of the speakers were followed by an active discussion among our members. Those presentations are attached.