What’s the Prescription for Lowering Drug Prices? | Catalina Gorla | TEDxBeaconStreet

Prescription drugs are taking an increasing share of our healthcare dollars. Is this the best use of our money, or are we overpaying?

It turns out there is an entire field of research dedicated to figuring out which drugs work best for a given medical condition. This field is called Comparative Effectiveness Research, and people across the globe use this data to figure out which drugs to use and pay for.

But here’s the catch: this data isn’t used in the US. Catalina explores why and more importantly, what we can do about it.
Catalina is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of TruDataRx. Responding to the growing problem of increasing prescription drug costs, TruDataRx serves self-insured employers and ACOs using comparative effectiveness analytics to reduce cost without compromising quality of care.

Catalina has spent the past seven years working in healthcare in a range of roles involving research commercialization, enterprise formation, and operations development. Previous to founding TruDataRx, Catalina was the founding COO of Informulary, Inc, a company committed to improving health by providing doctors and patients with the information they need to make wise decisions about prescription drugs, and also worked at Dartmouth College as the Program Manager of Innovations in Translation and New Initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. In this role, Catalina worked with researchers and business professionals to create self-sustaining entities that address needs in the health care delivery system.

Prior to Dartmouth, she worked as an economist for a large investment management firm, focusing on international financial markets. In this role, she developed new tools and analytical reports on foreign market investments. Prior to her work in economic research, Catalina completed a financial leadership rotation program in the insurance industry.

Catalina has lectured for entrepreneurship programs in Cambridge, MA, Hanover, NH, Paris, London, Kosovo, and Albania. Catalina graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx