Workshop: Healthcare Engineering and Health Services Research: Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers; Raleigh, North Carolina; April 6-8, 2008

也许可以毫不夸张地说，迅速上涨的医疗费用是我们国家今天面临的最紧迫的问题之一--即使是粗略地看一眼媒体，也会揭示出公众的强烈兴趣和担忧。在美国，快速上涨的医疗成本威胁着制造和服务公司的破产，造成了向海外转移的巨大压力。事实上，人们可以证明，帮助美国整个行业前景的最佳方式是改善医疗保健服务。近年来，来自美国国家工程院和医学研究所的一些备受瞩目的报告建议，在医疗保健和工程界之间发展有效的伙伴关系，作为开发可行解决方案的必要步骤。该项目的目标是将来自医疗保健工程和卫生系统的国家公认的研究人员聚集在一起，就他们的工作和合作潜力相互教育，并讨论这两个领域之间的可行合作机制，以帮助将他们的研究成果转化为临床实践和卫生政策。研讨会将于2008年4月7日至9日在北卡罗来纳州的罗利举行，来自全国各地的卫生服务和卫生保健工程的教职员工、学生、研究人员和从业者将参加。调查结果将在一份报告中公布，该报告旨在为这两个学科之间的合作制定一个可行的路线图。

It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the rapidly escalating costs of health care is one of the most pressing issues facing our nation today - even a cursory look of the media reveals intense public interest and concern. In the United States, rapidly rising healthcare costs threaten manufacturing and service companies with bankruptcy, creating intense pressure to move offshore. Indeed one can make the case that the best way to help prospects for U.S. industries as a whole is to improve healthcare delivery. In recent years, a number of high-profile reports from the National Academies of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine have recommended the development of effective partnerships between the healthcare and engineering communities as a necessary step towards the development of workable solutions to this problem.The objective of this project is to bring together nationally recognized researchers from healthcare engineering and health systems to educate each other as to their work and potential for collaboration, and to discuss actionable mechanisms for collaboration between the two fields to help move their findings into clinical practice and health policy. The workshop will be held in Raleigh, NC on April 7-9, 2008, and will involve faculty, students, researchers and practitioners from health services and healthcare engineering from around the country. The findings will be disseminated in a report aimed at developing an actionable roadmap for collaboration between these two disciplines.