It’s time to set ourselves up for success in managing chronic illness
Obesity, and its evil cousins diabetes and heart disease, are not going to be cured by more doctor visits. It’s going to take a complete remake of our environment.
Are we getting too much medicine?
Three times as much per-capita healthcare spending as the UK, five times as many CT scans as Germany, twice as much spending in McAllen as El Paso, Texas – what’s going on? Americans are consuming more medicine than is good for them…and evidently getting no healthier than people in other countries who spend and consume far less. But why?
Editorial: Money, sex, fame, and power – understanding motivation
Everyone loves a bargain but Americans, in particular, are voracious of consumers of, well, just about everything. In our age of budget deficits and exploding healthcare costs, what motivates both doctors and patients to continue pushing healthcare spending through the roof?
Editorial: Beyond the headlines: understanding H1N1 vaccine availability
In today’s world of hotel-room crystal meth labs and designer drugs from ‘head shops’, why can’t our best and brightest scientific minds create a life-saving vaccine on target and on time?
Will that be hollandaise with your egg, or a side of vaccine?
With so much warning of the HIN1 flu pandemic, why don’t governments and the pharma industry have enough vaccine in time for this flu season? As Dr Dennis Gross explains, for vaccines, the process defines the product. Change the process and you might lose clinical efficacy. The processes for vaccine production – even in 2009 – are fraught with sometimes more art than science.
ISPOR EU 2009: Bringing the Eiffel Tower into Perspective
Getting a drug approval, reimbursement, and access to markets is a long journey, but we are not alone. The focus on this year’s ISPOR EU annual conference was on health technology assessment in different countries. Is an international appraisal system likely in the near future?
A UK perspective: how can the US have reform without rational debate?
In recent rounds of the US healthcare debate, ‘rational debate’ seems to have been replaced with scare tactics, in the mainstream media at least. The UK healthcare system recently came under heavy criticism by the anti-reform lobby.
‘You say HTA, I say CER’: international perspectives on evidence-based health policy
George Bernard Shaw once described America and England as two countries separated by a common language. Might this also hold true for comparative effectiveness research and health technology assessment? This article highlights several, recently available resources for anyone seeking to understand healthcare systems outside their own country.
Using a worldview of healthcare to understand policy within
Overhauling the American health insurance system – a Herculean task to be sure, and the debate rages on through the summer months. I have my own strong opinions on this topic, but I am a bit surprised by the vehement response it has evoked among my fellow citizens.
Abstract Submission Deadlines
Abstract submission deadlines
Here we present abstract submission deadlines for international medical and health care conferences and meetings. Please note that dates were correct at time of sending this email; HOC cannot be responsible for any amendments.