Rossiter appointed to National Library of Medicine Board of Regents
Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, Michael Leavitt, has appointed College of William and
Mary faculty member, Louis F. Rossiter, Ph.D., to the Board of Regents
of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The appointment is effective
immediately and runs through July of 2011.
The National Library of Medicine is on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and is the world's largest medical library. The Library collects materials and provides information and research services in all areas of biomedicine and health care. The present National Library of Medicine was established in 1836 in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army.
Rossiter is research professor and director of the Schroeder Center for Healthcare Policy, Jefferson Program in Public Policy at the College of William & Mary. He is a health economist, with expertise in reimbursement policy, especially Medicare and Medicaid managed care. He has published more than 50 articles, edited 14 books, and published the book Medicare Managed Care in 2001.
“As Medicare costs and health care costs in general continue to skyrocket, there is growing interest in the U.S. Congress for the National Library of Medicine serving an even larger role as a repository of information and data, especially genetic data, on the evidence of what really works in medicine,” said Rossiter. “I look forward to being a part of that work.”
Recently, Rossiter was the principal investigator for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored study at the College of William and Mary examining the emerging market of pharmacogenomics and health care competition. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is the study of how inherited variations in genes dictate a person’s reaction to a drug. The objective of the study was to explore whether the current health care financing, delivery, and payment environment has the necessary features to facilitate the development and adoption of this emerging science. He found that the existing system is not designed for, and is therefore inadequate for, PGx products and services to reach their maximum treatment potential.
The National Library of Medicine operates the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the National Information Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology. The Library also runs the Visible Human Male, a large computer dataset of images based on a cadaver, and the Visible Human Female as well as MEDLINE and MedlinePlus for consumer information. ClinicalTrials.gov, an online resource designed to give the public easy access to information about research studies, was also recently launched by NLM.
Rossiter may be reached for additional comment at 757.221.1913 or [[lfross]].
