Future plans
The Autism Consortium model of empowering families and revolutionizing research has already demonstrated remarkable success. The model is set up to move forward with speed—our work has just begun.
Our short term and long term goals include:
For enhanced clinical care:
- Guaranteed insurance reimbursement for clinical genetic tests not just in Boston, but nationwide
- Advocacy for broader insurance coverage for clinical care and services
- Share best practices across clinics and hospitals to increase operating efficiencies
- Develop a clinical trials network within Boston to develop new therapies, rapidly translated to clinical care
- We plan to begin a clinical trial for a therapeutic for Rett Syndrome by the end of 2009
- Substantially increase family recruitment into research
- Our goal is to recruit over 300 families for research in 2009 across 5 hospitals
- Find the genes responsible for different autism spectrum disorders and understand how they work
- Capitalizing on the latest technology
- Understand the traits and behaviors of specific ASDs
- Continue to recruit leading scientist and postdoctoral fellows into the field of autism research
- Continue to build national and international collaborations to maximize resources and minimize duplication of efforts