DIA and National Pharmaceutical Council Will Host Two-Day Conference on Comparative Effectiveness Research

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- DIA and the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) will co-host the Comparative Effectiveness: A Real-World User's Guide Conference on March 14-15 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference will focus on the continued push for increased levels of evidence of comparative effectiveness research (CER) applied within health technology assessments, research planning and drug development.

Three distinguished CER researchers -- Bryan R. Luce, Senior Vice President, Science Policy, United BioSource Corp., Sean Tunis, Founder and Director, Center for Medical Technology Policy, and Brian Sweet, Executive Director, Healthcare Alliances, AstraZeneca -- will announce the first set of guiding principles developed for conducting CER studies. They also will discuss the practical application of the principles, and debate the effects the principles may have on various constituency groups, including patients, payers, and pharmaceutical industry manufacturers.

More than $1 billion dollars has been invested in comparative effectiveness research, and funding is only expected to grow in coming years. CER is designed to inform health care decisions by providing evidence on the effectiveness, benefits and harms of different treatment options. The evidence is generated from research studies that compare drugs, medical devices, tests, surgeries or ways to deliver health care. As CER becomes a standard by which patient access to new products and services is granted, the need to develop guiding principles to help yield desirable results is heightened.

The conference and sessions are timely as the complexities involved in comparative effectiveness research continue to demand principles and guidelines that can help govern and frame the entire CER enterprise. In addition, the recent creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), as well as new standards for evidence evaluation by leading payers, have made understanding the applications vitally important.

ABOUT DIA
DIA is a neutral, global, professional, member-driven association of nearly 18,000 professionals involved in the discovery, development and life cycle management of pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices. Through our international educational offerings and myriad networking opportunities, DIA provides a global forum for knowledge exchange that fosters the innovation of products, technologies and services to improve health and well being worldwide. Headquarters are in Horsham, PA, USA, with offices in Basel, Switzerland, Tokyo, Japan, Mumbai, India and Beijing, China.

SOURCE DIA