Researchers
Mark B. McClellan (Principal Investigator) - Stanford University
Daniel P. Kessler - Stanford University
Kathryn M. McDonald - Stanford University
Kelly Dunham

The TECH project is an international collaboration aimed at understanding patterns of technology adoption and diffusion of medical care and the effects of these patterns on patient outcomes. The team, organized from 17 developed countries, is exploring whether individuals living in countries that rapidly adopted new revascularization technologies and clot-dissolving drugs are more likely to survive heart attacks than individuals living in countries that have adopted such interventions more slowly.

The TECH project has three specific goals:

1. To develop a sustainable global network of collaborating healthcare researchers with expertise in clinical medicine, economics, epidemiology and related fields, able to conduct detailed, valid studies with comparable microdata and standardized methods.
2. To conduct a detailed, quantitative analysis of technological change in the treatment of heart attacks in the participating countries, resulting in a series of publications that describe and quantify how technological change for this disease has differed across countries; the economic and regulatory factors influencing these treatment differences; and their consequences for disease outcomes and resource use.
3. To generalize these results, by (1) extending our methods to study the more prevalent but less severe forms of ischemic heart disease, (2) relating our disease-specific, "micro" findings to existing evidence on aggregate "macro" differences in the levels and trends in medical expenditures and health outcomes across countries, and (3) conducting exploratory studies to extend our methods to the analysis of a more chronic illness.

For information on how to access the Web site, contact Kathryn McDonald at Kathryn.McDonald@stanford.edu .

Contact
Kathryn McDonald

Funding provided by
• National Institutes of Health