Rising health care costs are one of the world's most important problems. In the United States the health care industry is approximately $2 trillion, while health care costs have been increasing about 10% a year.
Moreover, health care is fragmented and of very unequal quality. Predominantly, current medical knowledge is based on clinical studies involving few patients.
Given the availability of medical care data involving millions of Americans over multiple years, revolutionary advances in data mining in the last decade motivated by the need to analyze gigantic data sets, the emergence of new methods from Operations Research (probabilistic modeling, optimization), there is a real opportunity for quantitative approaches to impact positively the delivery and quality of health care.
Important questions where Operations Research methods can help address include:
How does one assess the quality of medical care? How can one improve medical diagnosis and improve delivery of health care? Which therapy is best for a particular disease? Are there unexpected connections between different diseases? Are there adverse reactions of particular drugs?
In several other industries (finance, marketing, the internet, sports, revenue management, among others), quantitative methods have had a very significant effect. It is the aspiration of this conference to begin the dialog among researchers and practitioners about the potential use of methods from Operations Research in health care, provide new directions for research and generally improve the delivery and quality of health care.
Schedule of Events
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Cocktail Reception and Dinner
Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel
Kendall Square, Cambridge
6:00 – 7:00 PM |
PM Cocktail Reception |
7:00 – 9:00 PM |
Dinner |
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Plenary Sessions
MIT Tang Center, E51-115
Wong Auditorium
2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Morning Session |
|
7:30 – 8:30 |
Registration and Continental Breakfast |
8:30 – 9:30 |
Robert Langer, MIT |
9:30 – 10:30 |
Chris Kryder, D2 Hawkeye, and Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT |
10:30 – 11:00 |
BREAK |
11:00 – 12:00 |
Nitin Patel, CYTEL |
12:00 – 1:00 |
LUNCH |
Afternoon Session |
|
1:00 – 2:00 |
Thomas Bortfeld, Massachusetts General Hospital |
2:00 – 3:30 |
POSTER SESSION AND BREAK |
3:30 – 4:30 |
Edward Kaplan, Yale University |
4:30 – 5:30 |
Lawrence M. Wein, Stanford University |
Speakers
| Keynote Speaker | Robert Langer, MIT |
| Plenary Talks | Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT Thomas Bortfeld, Massachusetts General Hospital Edward Kaplan, Yale University Chris Kryder, D2 Hawkeye Nitin Patel, CYTEL Lawrence M. Wein, Stanford University |
Poster Session
During the Conference, we will host a one-hour poster session on May 23rd. Anyone interested in participating in the poster session should submit the title of their session and a one page description by April 25, 2007. Individuals will be notified via email of formal acceptance of the session by May 2, 2007.
Submissions of papers for the poster session should be sent to:
Laura Rose
Operations Research Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E40-143
Cambridge, MA 02139
