This presentation will discuss the current clinical diagnostic business scenario and the business opportunities available with a focus on the U.S. market.

About the speaker:

Sivaraman Vasudevan is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2008-09.  Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he has been working for Reliance Life Sciences in Bangalore, India as Regional Head in charge of sales opoerations for Eastern and Southern parts of India.  His job responsibilities include developing business plans, implementing strategies and achieving sales targets.  Additionally, he is part of an elite corporate team in developing national and regional marketing strategies. 

Thailand introduced a universal coverage program in 2001. This program is commonly known as a "30 Baht Health Reform," adding coverage for nearly 14 million more people. This presentation will give an overview of the 30 Baht Health Reform including its main features and evolution, as well as a preliminary evaluation of its success. The talk will mostly be based on a paper entitled "Early Results from Thailand's 30 Baht Universal Health Reform - Something to Smile About," published in Health Affairs.

Kannika Damrongplasit is currently the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles and RAND Corporation. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California. Her fields of interest are in program evaluation, applied econometrics, health economics and applied microeconomics. She has published in Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Health Affairs, and Singapore Economic Review. In January 2010, she will assume an assistant professor position at the Department of Economics, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

With what now seem like almost weekly product scandals, recalls, and supply chain exposes, the public increasingly wants to know more about the products they are putting in, on, and around their families. Until recently, consumers had no way to find out the full impacts of the products they consumed. However, with advances in information technologies, product assessment methodologies, and web and mobile platforms, there is now a real potential to radically increase transparency in consumer markets and global supply chains. Dara O'Rourke, Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, will discuss an experiment in providing information to the public about the environmental, social, and health impacts of products and companies: GoodGuide. GoodGuide's award-winning web and iPhone apps have been featured recently in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, and even Oprah's Magazine! Dara will discuss GoodGuide's long-term vision, current strategies, and the information technologies they are applying to this challenge.

Dara O’Rourke is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of GoodGuide. Dara’s research focuses on systems for monitoring the environmental, labor, and health impacts of global production systems. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Business Week, Newsweek, Time, and TechCrunch. Dara has served as a consultant to international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a wide range of domestic and international non-governmental organizations. He has degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Political Science, and Energy and Resources, and he previously taught at MIT.

GoodGuide seeks to revolutionize how consumers see and interact with products and companies. GoodGuide provides a suite of tools that offer information about the environmental, social, and health performance of products and companies to consumers at the point of purchase (through web and mobile apps), and that empower people to screen and compare products based on their personal values and concerns. GoodGuide's tools seek to empower millions of consumers to buy products that better match their values, to avoid products that are detrimental to their health, the environment, or issues they care about, and to participate in a more transparent marketplace.

In this conversation, Taiwan's Representative to the United States, Jason Yuan, and Director of CDDRL, Larry Diamond, will talk about a variety of issues associated with the triangular relationship among Taiwan, China, and the United States.

Mr. Jason Yuan took office as Republic of China’s (Taiwan) Representative to the United States in August, 2008. Representative Yuan is a career diplomat who began his government career in 1974 as an acting naval attaché for the Embassy of the Republic of China in the United States. After then, he has been Deputy Director and Director of Congressional Liaison Division for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, Director General of Department of North American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada. He has also served as Ambassador to Panama, and Director General of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. Prior to the current post, Representative Yuan was Representative of Kuomintang-People First Party (KMT-PFP Alliance) to the United States.

Representative Yuan obtained his MA in Business and Public Administration from Southeastern University and BA in Chinese Navy Academy (Taiwan).

This is special event within Democracy in Taiwan Program.