Speaker Series
Our speaker series highlights the work of leading clinical researchers in rheumatology and in clinical research methods. The goal of the Boston MCRC is to carry out and disseminate high-level clinical and interdisciplinary research of relevance to rheumatology and musculoskeletal disorders, and continue to train the next generation of researchers in this field.
Schedule 2022
Professor Austin Frakt
Tuesday, February 8th, 2022 from 9:30 – 10:30am EST
Dr. Frakt’s Presentation Title: A Press Release is Not Enough
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Austin Frakt, PhD is a health economist, professor, and researcher, as well as the creator and co-editor-in-chief of The Incidental Economist.
He has an educational background in physics and engineering. After receiving his PhD in statistical and applied mathematics he spent four years at a research and consulting firm conducting policy evaluations for federal health agencies.
Dr. Frakt is now the Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center (PEPReC) at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a Professor with the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health. In addition, he is a Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Frakt is Editor-in-Chief of Health Services Research and serves on the editorial board of The American Journal of Managed Care. He has also served as a member of the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council.
Professor William Dixon
Tuesday, July 12th, 2022 from 9:30 – 10:30am EST
Dr. Dixon’s Presentation Title: TBD
William Dixon, MD qualified from Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals, London, trained as a rheumatologist in Manchester, UK and has higher degrees from The University of Manchester and McGill University, Montreal. He is a Professor of Digital Epidemiology, Director of the Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis at the University of Manchester and an honorary consultant rheumatologist at Salford Royal Hospital.
His passion is using technology to support clinical care and research to improve patients’ lives. This includes the collection and sharing of research quality data from clinicians, collecting patient-generated data including its integration into electronic health records, and analysis of social media data. Recent digital health studies include the national smartphone study and citizen science experiment Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, remote monitoring of rheumatoid arthritis (REMORA) which uniquely integrates patient-generated data into the NHS, and Assembling the Data Jigsaw, a local data integration pilot to use a range of data sources from clinicians and patients in Salford for addressing clinically important questions about arthritis.
Dr. Dixon is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, is Co-Director of the International Centre for Translational Digital Health, a partnership between the Universities of Manchester, Toronto and Melbourne, and is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for Our Future Health, an ambitious health study of 5M people in the UK.