MASH Newes

Nosokinetics

MASH NEWS

By Martin Pitt

Report from the 33rd International Conference on the Operational Research Applied to Health Services

The ORAHS 33rd conference (see http://www.emse.fr/orahs) in St Etienne, France (15-20 July 2007), opened with more than 140 participants from over 20 countries - easily its biggest and most international gathering since its inception. This reflects the current growing interest in healthcare modelling and simulation across the world (which was also witnessed at the highly successful recent IMAHealth conference (see http://www.healthcareinformatics.org.uk/imahealth2007) in London in April 2007).

ORAHS is largely an academic conference with the vast majority of delegates drawn from research institutions. This year, however, there seemed to be a greater awareness of the need to address issues of implementation. A few presentations by participants from commercial or health service backgrounds were useful in highlighting the differing perspectives of other professional groups.

Over the five days of the conference, presentations ranged widely across many fields of Operational Research in health services. Workforce modelling, generic frameworks, hospital simulations, patient flow modelling, data mining, and policy issues were all well covered. A number of presentations addressed the critical issues of how to ensure more OR research finds its way into service implementation.

ORAHS places a strong emphasis on social and networking events. Plenty of time to sample the joys of French cuisine and visit the historic sites around St Etienne and Lyon. Time also for the delegates to meet and discuss potential collaborative projects, share ideas, and seek ways to extent their research. A key ingredient in the conference is the involvement of a significant contingent of post-graduate research students who have tutorial streams and dedicated events to support their involvement.

We will aim to include a fuller report from ORAHS 33 as well as detail from the many other recent health care modelling events (eg. the IMAHealth 2007 conference) in the next issue of the Nosokinetics News.

NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research:

Deadline 20 August 2007, 5:00pm

The funding scheme aims to:

Provide evidence to improve health outcomes in England
Enable NHS trusts to tackle areas of high priority or need for health
Provide some stability of funding to support the long-term development of top quality applied research
Replace, in part, programmes supported by the Priorities and Needs component of NHS R&D

Annual budget of Ł75 million once it reaches full capacity. Individual awards maximum of Ł2m over a period of three to five years.

All NHS providers (including research general practices) in England may propose programmes, in collaboration with an appropriate academic partner or partners. Bids may be submitted by consortia including more than one NHS organisation. Bids may include support for patient/consumer groups leading or participating in programmes of research. It is possible that the academic partner could be a university outside England, if an appropriate case is made in the application. We would expect the application to make a strong case that the chosen academic partner was the organisation best placed to provide academic input to the planned research.

For further information see website:
http://www.nihr-ccf.org.uk/site/programmes/programmegrants/default.cfm

The deadline for completion of a Registration of Intent to Submit is 5:00pm on 20 August 2007.

[To Contents Page] [To Archive Overview]

Some navigational notes:

A highlighted number may bring up a footnote or a reference. A highlighted word hotlinks to another document (chapter, appendix, table of contents, whatever). In general, if you click on the 'Back' button it will bring to to the point of departure in the document from which you came.