US Moves to Improve Health Decisions

British Medical Journal
August 23, 2010

One of the provisions of the recent US health reform legislation was to create a national Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The institute, which will be an independent non-profit organisation, will guide the expansion of comparative effectiveness research…

Comparing risks and benefits of alternative healthcare strategies has been a longstanding goal of clinical research and health technology assessment, and it is also fundamental to comparative effectiveness research…

Criticism of comparative effectiveness research during the protracted debate on US healthcare reform centred on three areas. Firstly, critics warned that its methods of research and evaluation would emphasise average effects over individual effects and therefore interfere with the progress of "personalised medicine." Secondly, they predicted that it would hinder innovation by creating new hurdles for reimbursement. The near sighted goal of containing costs could, it was argued, fail to recognise that innovation contributes to both public health and economic growth.

Link to Full Article: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/341/aug23_1/c3615