The Department of Health Systems and Services, Medicines and Health Technologies Unit of the Pan American Health Organization, organizes the Seminar “Advance HTA Project and its Implications for the Americas Region”, to be held on the day January 21, 2:00pm – 5:30pm Washington, DC time. 
Professor Panos Kanavos, from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), will speak about the results and lessons for the Region from this project. The Advance HTA project, of which PAHO was a part, was led by LSE and brought together 13 members from 11 countries. Its objective was to promote and strengthen tools and practices related to the application and implementation of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in the countries.
Those interested can attend the event via WebEx using the following link:https://paho.webex.com/meet/hta
Presentations will be made in English and there will be no translation.
Agenda – January 21
14:30 Results of the Advance HTA Project (Panos Kanavos)
15:30 Questions
15:50 Interval
16:10 STDs and Decision Making in the Americas (Alexandre Lemgruber)
16:30 Potential implications: Lessons learned, Policy recommendations and progress in HTA (Panos Kanavos)
17:00 Discussion
17:30 Closing
Speaker:
Panos Kanavos (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Professor of International Health Policy in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Programme Director of the Medical Technology Research Group (MTRG) at LSE Health. He was a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School. An economist by training, he currently coordinates the Programme in International Health Policy at LSE and teaches Health Economics, Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy, Health System Finance, and Health System Performance Indicators.
Panos leads the activities of MTRG, which is a research unit comprising 11 researchers at LSE Health, focusing on interdisciplinary and comparative research into medical technology policies. The group pursues the following research streams:
– The economics of medical technologies, in particular medicines and medical devices;
– Prescription, relevance and quality of care;
– Access to medical technologies in developing and transition economies; and
– Disease management and the effectiveness of medical technology policies.
As part of its activities, MTRG manages the Pharmaceutical Policy Issues Programme (PPPI), the Medical Devices Programme, participates in and conducts studies under the auspices of the European Medicines Information Network (EMI-net), participates in the network for the study of rare diseases (BURQOL-RD), and is a member of the European Health Technology Institute for Socio-Economic Research (EHTI). It also coordinates the activities of the Patients' Academy, an initiative between academia, healthcare regulatory agencies and patient groups.
Panos has served as an advisor to several international governmental and non-governmental organisations, including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the American Association of Retired Persons and the ministries of health of over 21 transition and developing countries. He has participated in the European Pharmacists Forum as an advisor to the European Commission – Directorate-General for Enterprise and was part of the Commission’s reflection process on the economic aspects of medical devices.