[Ip-health] CPTech Brown Bag Seminar: Aidan Hollis on "Uses for Prizes on Drug Development" (April 25)

[Joy Spencer]

The Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) is hosting a seminar by
Aidan Hollis on   "Uses of Prizes for Drug Development".

Date:     Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Time:    12:30pm-2:00pm
Venue:  1621 Connecticut Avenue Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009

The use of prizes to stimulate innovation in medicines -- even to
replace the incentives for research created by patent monopolies -- has
recently been proposed by Representative Bernie Sanders. The usual
critique of this proposal is that it would require the government to
have a method of valuing drugs which is superior to that of the
marketplace.

In this presentation, Aidan Hollis will discuss how (1) the existing
pharmaceutical marketplace is seriously dysfunctional and how (2)
governments and insurers are already using exactly the kind of analysis
that is required to make a reward system work well for pharmaceutical
markets. A reward system for pharmaceuticals could generate enormous
gains in innovation and access to drugs, without additional cost to
society. Aidan Hollis will also show how it may be possible to move to
such a reward system incrementally.
For more information, see
http://econ.ucalgary.ca/fac-files/ah/drugprizes.htm

Aidan Hollis is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of
Calgary and a research fellow of the Institute of Health Economics. He
graduated from the Universities of Cambridge (MA) and Toronto (PhD), and
was TD MacDonald Chair of Industrial Economics at the Canadian
Competition Bureau. While he has published widely in economics, his
research focuses on competition and intellectual property in
pharmaceutical markets, and he has been studying reward systems for
pharmaceutical markets for the last couple of years.

If you would like to join us please RSVP your name, title, organization
and contact details to: joy.spencer@cptech.org or 202.332.2670 (t)

Please note that our next brown bag seminar will be with Kevin Outterson
on May 10 at 10:30am (note the time) on Patent Buy-Outs for Global
Disease Innovation