Presenters

PROFESSOR UWE SIEBERT, MD, MPH, MSc, ScD

Professor of Public Health (UMIT), Adjunct Professor of Health Policy & Management (Harvard University),Chair, Institute of Public Health, Medical Decision Making and Health Technology Assessment, UMIT - University for Health Sciences Medical Informaatics and Technology, Austria.

After medical school, Prof. Siebert worked for several years as a physician in international public health projects. He then earned an MPH at the Munich School of Public Health, and completed an MSc in Epidemiology and an ScD in Health Policy and Management with a concentration in decision sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. Before he started his faculty position at Harvard Medical School, he was the Director of the Bavarian Public Health Research and Coordinating Center at the University of Munich, Germany, and completed Visiting Scholarship at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

His research interests include applying decision-analytic modeling, meta-analysis, quality-of-life assessment and cost-effectiveness analysis in the framework of health technology assessments (HTA) as well as in the clinical context of routine health care. His current substantive research focuses on cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hepatitis C, HIV, and neurological disorders. His methodological research is focused on evaluations of public health interventions, prevention and screening, diagnostic imaging procedures, personalized medicine as well as the development of causal decision models based on complex longitudinal data with time-varying interventions or exposures.

Prof. Siebert is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM), a member of the International Expert Committee Advising the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) on the Methods for Economic Evaluations of Health Care Interventions, a member of the Advisory Board of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Health Technology Assessment in Austria, and he has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). He is member of the Steering Committee of ONCOTYROL - Center of Personalized Cancer Medicine in Austria and Director of the Division for Public Health Decision Modeling, HTA and Health Economics in the Center. He is the Chairman of the Working Groups "Health Economics" and "Medical Decision Making" of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS). He is Co-Chair of the "Issues in Methodology Section" of the SMDM Policy Initiative. He teaches courses in decision analysis, HTA, economic evaluation, and advanced epidemiologic methods at several universities and for industry in Europe and the US. He advises government agencies, academic institutions and the industry regarding the conduction and impact of health technology assessments on policy and reimbursement decisions. He has authored more than 150 publications including HTA reports, textbook chapters for decision analysis, scientific articles, and editorials.

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PROFESSOR RON GOEREE, MA

Director, PATH Research Institute,Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Ron is a member of the Centre for the Evaluation of Medicines (CEM) and affiliated with St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH). His research interests are centered on health technology assessment, decision modelling and economic evaluations. Ron teaches in the Health Research Methodology (HRM) Program, where he recently developed a new course in advanced decision analytic modelling and developed a Field of Specialization for the HRM Program in health technology assessment. Ron Goeree is involved in numerous research projects with both the Ontario MOHLTC and CADTH. He also has extensive experience as a consultant on research activities of government bodies, and with many other agencies and corporations. Ron Goeree received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from McMaster University.

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BEATE JAHN, PhD

Senior Scientist, Institute of Public Health, Medical Decision Making and HTA, UMIT, Austria.

After her studies of Mathematics and Economics, Dr. Jahn worked in the Department of Structured Finance & Project Finance at the German Railway Company 'Deutsche Bahn'. She then moved to Austria where she worked as a research assistant at the Department of Medical Statistics, Computer Sciences and Health Management at Innsbruck Medical University. During this time she spent several months at PATH, the research institute for Assessment of Technology in Health, Hamilton, Canada. She completed her doctoral degree in Social Science with the focus on health-economic evaluation at the Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck. She joined the Department of Public Health, Medical Decision Making and Health Technology Assessment at UMIT in June 2007.

Her research interests include applying decision-analytic modeling, mathematical methods, quality-of-life assessment and cost-effectiveness analysis in health economics and policy decision making. Currently, she focuses on the application of discrete event simulation for economic evaluation and optimization. Her field research includes the development of a breast cancer outcome & policy model, a community-based aging and care study and a burden of communicable disease study. Dr. Jahn is a lecturer at UMIT and coordinates the practical hands-on workshop 'Modeling Approaches for HTA' in the HTADS Program. She is also responsible for the scientific project management of Area 4 'Decision-Analytic Outcome Modeling, Health Technology Assessment and Health Economics' in the ONCOTYROL Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine Research. Her research has been presented at international conferences and published in scientific articles. She held a pre-conference workshop on Discrete Event Simulation at the European Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in 2008.

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MIRJAM KRETZSCHMAR, PhD

Associate Professor Theoretical Epidemiology, Julius Centre for Health Sciences & Primary Care, University Medical Centre, Utrecht, Project Leader Surveillance, Centre for Infectious DEisease Control, RIVM, The Netherlands.

Mirjam studied Mathematics at the Universities of Mainz and Tübingen, Germany, followed by a doctorate in Mathematics in 1987. Subsequent to gaining her doctorate, she carried out post-doctoral work in the United States (Cornell University), Scotland (Strathclyde University, Glasgow), and the Netherlands (Centre for Mathematics and Informatics, Amsterdam). From 1992 to 2005, Dr. Kretzschmar was a researcher and Project Leader at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the Netherlands, in the field of mathematical modelling of infectious diseases and control. From 2005 to 2007 she held a position as an associate professor at the School of Public Health, University of Bielefeld, Germany. Since 2008, she has a joint position as a senior researcher and project leader at the Centre for Infectious Disease Control, RIVM, Bilthoven, and as an associate professor at the Julius Centre for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Centre Utrecht, both in the Netherlands.

Dr. Kretzschmar is on the editorial boards of the international journals Mathematical Biosciences and BMC Infectious Diseases. She holds the certificate for epidemiology of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie (GMDS). She is a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands (a scientific advisory body for the Dutch Ministry of Health) in the Standing Committee 'Infection and Immunity' and member of several other advisory boards. She is regularly reviewing for numerous international scientific journals and has organised scientific meetings, workshops and summer schools. She has extensive teaching experience in undergraduate and graduate courses. She is the coordinator of the Utrecht Centre for Infection Dynamics, a research collaboration in the area of mathematical modeling of infectious disease epidemiology at Utrecht University. Dr Kretzschmar has published in the area of statistical and mathematical analysis of spread and control infectious diseases, and health economic evaluation of infectious disease control. Her main research areas are sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, sexual and contact networks, and vaccine-preventable diseases.

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GORD BLACKHOUSE, BCom, MBA, MSc

Research Associate, Programs for Assessment of Technology in Health (PATH) Research Institute, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Canada.

Gord Blackhouse currently manages the Health Technology Assessment Program. His expertise in the area of economic evaluation of health care technologies includes the development of decision analytic models and patient level analysis. He is a part-time faculty member of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University, and received his MBA and MSc from McMaster University.

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