Overview

The Centre for Evaluation of Medicines (CEM) has been in operation since 1992. It is an academic research and educational unit. The CEM mission is to evaluate drug and technology use in the real world in order to improve patient health outcomes and policy decisions.

CEM’s areas of proficiency include:

• pharmaco-economics and health technology assessment
• pharmaceutical policy evaluation
• pharmaco-epidemiology and drug use evaluation
• evidence based therapeutic resource development and implementation
• health informatics

The Centre for Evaluation of Medicines is housed within the Father Sean O’Sullivan Research Centre (FSORC) at St. Josephs Healthcare Hamilton. Within the Centre for Evaluation of Medicines there are four groups with special or focused research interests: Therapeutics group (THERAP); Program for Assessment of Technology in Health (PATH); Biostatistics group (BIOSTATS); St Joseph ’s Health System Research Network (SJHSRN).

All CEM core faculty hold academic appointments at McMaster University in the Faculty of Health Sciences (in the departments of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Medicine or Family Medicine). There are 13 core faculty members at the CEM and an additional 7 associate faculty members. The faculty are a multi-disciplinary group comprised of: physicians-clinical pharmacologists; pharmacists; health economists; health policy analysts; clinical epidemiologists; biostatisticians; health informaticists; social scientists.