Health
HHS: Collaboration key to getting medical advances to patients quickly
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Feb. 7, 2005
The Dept. of Health and Human Services should improve cooperation with other federal agencies that play a role in medical technology development to increase the speed at which innovations in the lab make it to patients, according to a report issued in January by an HHS task force studying the issue.
"When it comes to making life-saving technology, drugs, and devices available to patients, there's no time to waste," said then HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "So, we took a hard look at how we can better foster the innovation and research needed to bring new technologies and treatments forward quickly."
The report advocates that the agency create a forum for investigators and manufacturers to communicate with HHS, continue to support the development of a standard format for electronic clinical trial data, and work toward improving collaboration between the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additional efforts should be made to identify knowledge gaps among personnel working on technology transfer issues.
Scientists, government agencies and medical societies have long been debating ways to improve the transformation of good bench science into good medicine. Most recently, the American Medical Association's Board of Trustees issued a report on the subject in June 2004.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/02/07/hlbf0207.htm.
