Health Technologies and Health Systems Workstream

Background and objectives

Genetics and genomics-based diagnosis and treatments are gradually, but many would argue fundamentally, transforming areas of healthcare.  New approaches to research, based on a very different understandings of the way in which medical interventions interact with particular patients and groups of patients, combined with new approaches such as stem cells, synthetic biology and systems biology, mean that the impact of these types of new genetics-based diagnostics and treatments is very likely to increase in the health sector over the next decades. 

 
Meanwhile, the ways in which these technologies will evolve and touch the lives of patients in different contexts will depend on the numerous and complex ways in which ‘health systems’ interact with, shape and are in turn influenced by new science and technology. Whilst technologies and product innovation are developed in firms and research institutes that operate globally, health systems are largely nationally based. This means that new technologies, drugs and treatments may reach various sets of patients, doctors and other consumers in radically different ways.

It is also the case that there tends to be a significant gap between researchers working on understanding innovation in life sciences and researchers looking at the development of different health systems.  Consequently, understandings of the ways in which health systems and health innovation interact with each other are poorly understood from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The seminars organised as part of this series aim to address these gaps. The background document raises further questions and details on the seminars. The EGN Centres have long individual and combined experience working on different aspects of genomics which are being put together in this workstream. 

The workshops

Each of the EGN Centres (CESAGEN, EGENIS, INNOGEN and the Genomics Forum) will take responsibility for organising one workshop, while a final fifth workshop will draw together discussion from the other four workshops and focus on policy implications.  The series will run between December 2009 and December 2010.

•  Workshop 1 - The Impact of Genomics on Disease Classification, 2 December 2009, Cardiff University
  The above inaugural seminar was hosted successfully by Cesagen at the Milleniumm Centre in Cardiff. More than 20 people attended, representing various academic and practitioner interests in the area of disease diagnostics and classification.  In particular, the workshop examined the impacts of genomics on disease classification, reclassification of cancers and psychiatric disorders and how these may impact treatment approaches. It concluded with a look at health economics and how genomics might feed into health system decision making regarding diagnostic and treatment options. The second workshop will build on these discussions, looking in more detail at genetic subpopulations and health system responses. A detailed report and links to workshop presentations will be available on this website soon. For further details, please contact Adam Hedgecoe (hedgecoeam@cardiff.ac.uk)
  
  
• Workshop 2 - Genomic subpopulations and health systems responses, 23 April 2010, Exeter University 
  The second workshop continues some of the themes from the first workshop with a more direct emphasis on health system. We will look at specific instances of health system response to genetic heterogeneity of disease within the populations they serve. The intent of this workshop is to look at genetic heterogeneity of diseases with impacts on health systems, and what measures in terms education, infrastructure, investment in research and/or technology, and policy, health system might engage to improve disease management. What implications for health systems follow, for example, from the genomics of common complex diseases? Are medical advances stemming from genomics increasing disparities in health systems between wealthy and poor countries? What models are emerging for addressing this gap, and how successful are they likely to be? What are the implications of population genetic heterogeneity with regard to susceptibility to disease or treatment response, particularly for the health systems of developing countries? What might ‘personalised medicine’ look like in the context of diverse health systems, and with what implications for the division of labour among health professionals and overall structure of care?
  Full Details
  Contact person: Dr Susan Kelly - s.e.kelly@exeter.ac.uk
  
  
• Workshops 3, 4 & 5 – Details to follow