First Meeting of the Expert Working Group to Establish Priority Areas for Research on Patient Safety
The working-group on priority-setting for patient safety research will meet for the first time on 13-14 July in Geneva. The objectives of the meeting are to:
- agree on the methodology of the priority-setting process
- establish a calendar and milestones for the delivery of the project.
The meeting will also involve the review of the existing research and the highlight of areas for further analysis.
The research programme of the World Alliance for Patient Safety adopted as one of its main action areas for 2006 and 2007, the assessment and analysis of priorities for research on patient safety. The priority-setting process will provide a framework for the establishment of priorities on research, and a menu of opportunities for funding and commissioning institutions as well as researchers from both, developed and developing countries.
Research, in general, and research on patient safety in particular, is a costly and skilled resource intensive exercise. Investments on patient safety research both, public and private, aim to improve the safety of health care through the acquisition of new knowledge. But the needs for new knowledge are so vast that investments on some of the needs may inevitably preclude from allocating resources on to some other needs. The decisions to allocate funds for research respond to many variables, such as the prevalence of the problems and their repercussions in the wellbeing of patients, the existence of cost-effective solutions and the feasibility of their implementation, the funding and other resource availability, the values and beliefs of the decision-makers and constituencies involved in the process, and so on. Because of the limitations of resources, the diverse interests of the major constituencies, the need to balance local requirements with global needs, it is on the interest of the research programme of the World Alliance for Patient Safety to establish a concerted discussion around priority setting for patient safety aiming to guide the program planning itself, but also the major commissioners and funding of research on patient safety world wide.
The project will be delivered through the work of an ad-hoc expert working group responsible for the establishment of recommendations to the Governing Council of the Research Program. The Council, will review and approve the recommendations at its annual meeting to be held in the spring of 2007.