Tonight I attended a dinner sponsored by the Aspen Institute's Health Stewardship Project that brought together a group of journalists, patient advocates and policy experts to discuss comparative effectiveness and the future of innovation. (How did I get in?) It was an off the record event but I can say for the most part that despite political and policy differences there was wide agreement that efforts to measure the value of new technologies should encourage innovation, not be generated by government alone but by robust partnerships, should promote healthy and long life, be controlled and easy to use by doctors and patients and not be used to control costs (however this latter objective will be harder to achieve if more health care spending is controlled by government.
There was less said about the role and impact of biomedical innovation on health care costs and society in general but here too there was agreement that more time and effort should be spent educating policymakers and the public about what innovation is and what it delivers.
Aspen's Health Stewardship Project plays and should play an important role in making health and innovation the cornerstones of health care reform.
There was less said about the role and impact of biomedical innovation on health care costs and society in general but here too there was agreement that more time and effort should be spent educating policymakers and the public about what innovation is and what it delivers.
Aspen's Health Stewardship Project plays and should play an important role in making health and innovation the cornerstones of health care reform.
