We will again offer presentations and discussion concerning funding interests and opportunities with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
Speakers will include:
William Lawrence, MD, MS, is in the Center for Outcomes and Evidence at AHRQ and will provide a description of the inner workings and funding priorities of the AHRQ, will detail AHRQ’s role in the context of health reform, and describe objectives to increase quality, performance, and patient centeredness in healthcare. Dr. Lawrence is a general internist and clinical decision analyst with research interests in cost-effectiveness analysis, health-related quality of life, and health preferences. His research focuses on improving the acceptability and usefulness of health care outcomes assessments, particularly measurement of health-related quality of life.
David Hickam, MD, MPH, is Program Director for Clinical Effectiveness Research at PCORI. He is a long-time member of SMDM and will provide an overview of funding interests from the PCORI perspective. He is responsible for developing PCORI’s research program that evaluates comparisons among alternative clinical strategies in a broad range of clinical domains. He also provides staff support to the PCORI Methodology Committee.
David Meltzer,MD, PhD, a member of the PCORI Methodology Committee and longstanding SMDM leader and former President, will brief SMDM members on issues being considered by the committee, including prioritization of research topics and comparative effectiveness methods.
SMDM members will have the opportunity to suggest areas in which currently-developed but underused and promising methods requiring further development and/or validation may be valuable for accomplishing PCORI and AHRQ goals, and compare their own research agendas with those outlined by AHRQ and PCORI. Additional speakers will be named soon.