Comparative Effectiveness Research
Government Health IT magazine recently published “The comparative effectiveness rally”, a great write-up by Phil Carey that explains comparative effectiveness research (CER).
The article includes interesting details from Dr. Brent James, executive director of Intermountain Healthcare’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research. He discussed his “Help Two” decision support system implementation as well as the Microsoft Amalga platform.
The Cochrane Collaboration was mentioned as an international, not-for-profit that documents comparative effectiveness. This was the first time I had heard of the organization, and it may prove to be a useful resource. One such example is their report on Antenatal corticosteroids for accelerating fetal lung maturation for women at risk of preterm birth. Unfortunately, the Cochrane library is not a public resource in the United States, but at least it exists and is being maintained through some financial model. From a software standpoint, the next steps for the Cochrane reports should include structured data sets in XML so that the reports can be analyzed and parsed into components for providers and decision support systems. Coding CER data is critical to its availability both at the point of care and when analyzing a population.
Another article worth mentioning in the same issue of Government Health IT magazine is “Medical analytics in war” by Peter Buxbaum. It discusses the importance of integrating population views through GIS systems to monitor outbreaks such as influenza within the theatre of battle.
“The U.S. military’s Medical Situational Awareness in Theater (MSAT) project, a portal application, is being designed to allow users to graphically view potential health threats to troops and to support decision making on the location of military medical units. MSAT will use Web services to allow commanders access to multiple databases and to generate graphical displays that turn raw data into actionable medical intelligence.”
The military frequently relocates troops, therefore it is critical to track location-based views. They are also focused on using Java standards to ensure data is available in component form.
Dan Housman
Managing Director, Analytical Applications
The article includes interesting details from Dr. Brent James, executive director of Intermountain Healthcare’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research. He discussed his “Help Two” decision support system implementation as well as the Microsoft Amalga platform.
The Cochrane Collaboration was mentioned as an international, not-for-profit that documents comparative effectiveness. This was the first time I had heard of the organization, and it may prove to be a useful resource. One such example is their report on Antenatal corticosteroids for accelerating fetal lung maturation for women at risk of preterm birth. Unfortunately, the Cochrane library is not a public resource in the United States, but at least it exists and is being maintained through some financial model. From a software standpoint, the next steps for the Cochrane reports should include structured data sets in XML so that the reports can be analyzed and parsed into components for providers and decision support systems. Coding CER data is critical to its availability both at the point of care and when analyzing a population.
Another article worth mentioning in the same issue of Government Health IT magazine is “Medical analytics in war” by Peter Buxbaum. It discusses the importance of integrating population views through GIS systems to monitor outbreaks such as influenza within the theatre of battle.
“The U.S. military’s Medical Situational Awareness in Theater (MSAT) project, a portal application, is being designed to allow users to graphically view potential health threats to troops and to support decision making on the location of military medical units. MSAT will use Web services to allow commanders access to multiple databases and to generate graphical displays that turn raw data into actionable medical intelligence.”
The military frequently relocates troops, therefore it is critical to track location-based views. They are also focused on using Java standards to ensure data is available in component form.
Dan Housman
Managing Director, Analytical Applications
Labels: CER
