CRES,- standing for Centre de Recerca en Economia i Salut or Center for Research in Health and Economics, is a research center of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). It was officially founded in July 1996. Its mission is to become a reference research center in Spain and Europe in health economics. CRES aims at offering response, from the academics, to our health care systems' most important challenges. In practice, CRES has largely developed its research in topics such as: (i) National Health Care Systems regulation, both in Europe and in Latin-American countries - placing special attention to the financing, organizational and management aspects of those systems; (ii) health care management research, including proposals on incentives, reimbursement systems, and organizational related issues; (iii) Social Insurance optimization in the National Health System (copayments and cost-sharing initiatives); (iv) the use of economic evaluation methodologies to improve health care systems efficiency and equity; and (v) the evaluation of pharmaceutical and health care management policies.
CRES was created with an open and multidisciplinary vocation. CRES hosts members either from the Economics and Business Department or the Experimental, Health and Technological Sciences Department. All of them share a significant research and teaching experience in the Health Economics and Management fields.
CRES has developed its research and training activity with the support of competitive funding (International, European or national wide) and by means of reaching several agreements with a diversity of institutions, including the Spanish Health Ministry, the Catalan Health Department, the Catalan Health Authority, Bertelssman Stiftung, Merck Foundation, BBVA Foundation, Farmaindustria, Bayer, GlaxoSmithkline S.A., Merck, Sharp & Dohme Spain, S.A., among others.
CRES research activity outstands in three general areas:: 1- Health Care Systems research, with special emphasis in financing, incentives and reimbursement systems. 2-Health care reforms assessment; and 3- Innovative methodologies for economic evaluation of drugs, medical devices and, in general, health care technology, envisioned as tools for health policy decision-making.
Besides research, CRES tries to be very active in graduate and continuing education. Conferences, workshops, short courses and seminars are organized on a regular basis, either within the Department of Economics and Management at UPF, the iDec (the UPF continuing education institute), or the GSE (Gradute School of Economics).
We are proud of our Global Health Leadership Forum (up to now jointly organized with the University of Berkeley in California), our on-line international Master in Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics and our traditional Master in Health Economics and Management. We are also happy about the successfully just started international Master in Health Economics at the Barcelona Gradute School of Economics (GSE).
CRES participates in several European Research Networks in Health Economics, such as one leaded by the London School of Economics in the UK, or the VII Research Framework Program network leaded by the European Health Management Association. These different collaborative research activities have yielded well-known publications such as "European research network on cost-containment policies and priority-setting in health care", "Transnational study of the socio-economic impact of Alzheimer's disease in the European Union", or "Assessing future needs in (graduate and vocational) training in the fields of health economics and management within the European Union: The case of Spain".
CRES international focus brought its candidacy to host the 5th International Health Economics Association Conference (IHEA) in 2005, as well as obtaining a Merck Foundation grant.
Video CRES description.
The main government body at CRES is represented by its Executive Board which nowadays is composed by:
Antoni Bosch-Domènech, director, Department of Economics and Business, UPF.
Francisco Poses Garriga, director, Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, UPF.
Laura Pellisé, Director, CRES-UPF.
Guillem López i Casasnovas, Professor, Department of Economics and Business, UPF.
Jaume Puig-Junoy, Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Business, UPF.
Vicente Ortún Rubio, Dean, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, UPF.
You may find detailed information on CRES research and teaching activity last year by reviewing our annual report linked at [2010]