Bio: Sarah Garner, Ph.D., a 2010-11 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is associate director for research and development at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). She is also member of the U.K.'s Regulation of Medicines Review Panel, an editor for the Cochrane Skin Group, and visiting scientist at MIT. Past positions include technical advisor, NICE Appraisals Team; pharmacist lead, Health Protection Agency/Department of Health Specialist Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance (SACAR); joint appointment as health technology analyst, NICE Appraisals Team and honorary research fellow at St. George's University of London; and research associate in the unit of health-care epidemiology, Institute of Sciences, Oxford University. Garner is author of 18 peer-reviewed publications that have appeared in journals including JAMA and the BMJ. She holds a Ph.D. from Nottingham University.
Placement: Tufts University
Mentors: Alan M. Garber, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Stanford University; Sean Tunis, M.D., M.Sc., Director, Center for Medical Technology Policy; Ruth Faden, Ph.D., Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and Philip Franklin Wagley Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Peter Neumann, Sc.D., Professor and Director, Center for Evaluation and Value and Risk in Health, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts Medical Center
Project: What Impact Will Comparative Effectiveness Research Have on Innovation?
Description: Garner's project aimed to examine the relationship between CER and innovation, and to identify policy options to enable CER to act an incentive to the development of "high-value" health care technologies. She conducted a literature review; interviewed key players in the governmental, regulatory, industry, patient advocate and comparative effectiveness sectors; and led a high-level, multi-sector focus group with policy experts to discuss the relationship between CER and innovation.