Speaker

Luciana Ballini graduated in Sociology at the London School of Economics and has a Master in Methods of clinical and epidemiological research. She leads the regional Health Technology Assessment programme of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, providing support to the regional health authority and the local health trusts in the evaluation, adoption, diffusion and appropriate clinical use of innovative health technologies and interventions. She has expertise in Evidence Based Medicine methodology, including critical appraisal and synthesis of biomedical research, systematic review and meta-analysis, quality assessment of studies and grading of evidence, identification and prioritization of research gaps.

She dedicates part of her activity to research in methodology, particularly for the evaluation of diagnostic tests, assessment and presentation of the quality of evidence, managing scientific uncertainty, communication with policy makers and uptake of HTA results in decision making processes. Since 2006, she has been leading Emilia-Romagna’s participation in the EUnetHTA project and three Joint Actions and she is currently serving as Chair of the EUnetHTA Plenary Assembly.

She is editor of the Cochrane Collaboration Review group named Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC).