PCORI To Launch Comparative-Effectiveness Research Network.

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The Washington Post (4/24, Kliff) "Wonkblog" reports a "new nonprofit is putting millions" of Federal healthcare reform money "towards an effort to turn routine doctor visits into a treasure trove of data on what medical treatments work best." The Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute, which the Affordable Care Act created to "support comparative effectiveness research," announced Tuesday that it "would move forward on that mission" by spending "$68 million to fund a network of health-care systems that cover as many as 12 million patients."

        CQ (4/24, Adams, Subscription Publication) adds that the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Janet Woodcock, MD, "noted that the FDA has been involved for decades in trying to support comparative effectiveness research and find out more about the products that the agency approves for use in the United States." According to Dr. Woodcock, "What the FDA needs and what the medical community needs is actionable information."

        According to Government Health IT (4/24, Sullivan), the "hybrid model will include patients, health systems, payers, physicians and researchers as active participants in the research. To that end, PCORI detailed two cooperative funding agreement opportunities to support the creation of Clinical Data Research Networks (CRDN) and Patient-Powered Research Networks (PPRNs)." For the CRDNs, PCORI "will award $56 million to as many as 8 existing or new networks, while the PPRNs funding total is $12 million, available to 18 networks," according to the statement the institute released yesterday.

        Modern Healthcare (4/24, Robeznieks, Subscription Publication) notes that PCORI Executive Director Dr. Joe Selby announced the funding during a roundtable discussion in the District of Columbia. "Putting patients' interests first in such an endeavor can make a difference and 'smooth the friction' between stakeholders," Selby "said of the project's patient-first focus." American Medical Association President-Elect Dr. Ardis Hoven, who was one of the roundtable participants, "called the effort 'an exciting opportunity,' and noted its potential for advancing the use of information gleaned from clinical registries into medicine." Organizations interested in participating in the network "must file a letter of intent by June 19 and must complete an application by Sept. 27."

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A look back at PCORI's 2012 achievements

December 27, 2012

The holiday season is traditionally a time to look back at the year's achievements. So, as we approach the end of 2012, let me remind you of a few of PCORI's accomplishments and invite you to read more about them.    This has been a year of substantial progress for PCORI. We finalized our definition of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and our National Priorities and Research Agenda, and adopted methodological standards for PCOR, all after soliciting and incorporating public comment. We made major strides in engaging a broad range of healthcare community stakeholders in our work. And we approved 75 research awards, 50 earlier this year through our Pilot Projects Program and 25 more on December 18 in our first round of primary research funding.    You can find out more about all of these efforts on our web site. But let me point you to a few recent PCORI Blog posts on developments you might find of particular interest.

Our First Set of Patient-Centered Comparative Effectiveness Awards In my most recent blog post, Round One: PCORI Gets Into the Business of Funding Patient-Centered CER, I outline how pleased we were with our first set of awards resulting from the PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs) we released in May. I discuss the approach our selection committee used in picking the 25 projects, in 17 states, to which we've committed nearly $41 million in funding. And I tried to give you a sense of what we learned from this effort and how we might do a better job with our application guidelines and review process in the future.    Engaging the Stakeholder Community in Research Prioritization Earlier this month we hosted two back-to-back workshops in the ongoing effort to engage the healthcare community in our process for selecting and prioritizing the topics we hope to see researchers study.     The first of our most recent workshops, "What Should PCORI Study? A Call for Topics from Patients and Stakeholders," literally invited stakeholders to suggest topics we should fold into our funding process. Susan Hildebrandt, our Director of Stakeholder engagement, provides a closer look at the results of that workshop in her blog post, Harnessing the Expertise of the Healthcare Community to Guide Outcomes Research.    The second workshop, "PCORI Methodology Workshop for Prioritizing Specific Research Topics," brought together expert methodologists, researchers, patients and other stakeholders to help us refine our process for identifying the questions important to patients, caregivers and clinicians so they can be the subject of future funding calls. Senior Scientist Rachael Fleurence, PhD, shares more about this initiative in her post Workshop Advances PCORI's Process for Picking High-Priority Research Questions.   Engaging Patients in Building a Research Community Bringing patients into our work in a meaningful way has been a particular emphasis for us this year. In Maintaining Momentum, Implementing Patient Input, Sue Sheridan, our Director of Patient Engagement, provides a follow-up report on the Patient Engagement Workshop we held in October, sharing plans for implementing some of the suggestions that came out of the event. We're also very excited about the launch of our first challenge initiative, which seeks out innovators who will create a "matching system" to link patients and scientists as partners in conducting research.  In Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Sheridan and PCORI Deputy Executive Director Anne Beal, MD, MPH, provide background and details of this competition, another suggestion discussed at the Patient Engagement Workshop.

We look forward to continuing our work together to advance our program of "research done differently" as we seek to provide patients and those who care for them with information that will help them make better-informed health and health care decisions. We have big plans for doing that in 2013; I'll be reporting to you on some of those initiatives in early January.   Until then, best wishes for the New Year.     Joe Selby, MD, MPH Executive Director Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

PCORI is moving toward greater specificity in the research it will fund

October 22, 2012

A new Health Affairs Blog post details how - via two "complementary but equally critical paths" that will build a "robust portfolio of patient-centered outcomes research that will address the unmet needs of patients, caregivers, clinicians and other health care stakeholders."   PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH, and PCORI staff scientist Rachael Fleurence, PhD, describe each path, one a broad "investigator-initiated" funding process and the other a more directed "patient- and stakeholder-initiated" approach.   The first, launched when we issued our first broad PCORI Funding announcements in May, "leverages the broad research community's wisdom, but brings patients and stakeholders into the process by requiring they be included as meaningful part of research teams and including them in the application review process."   But recognizing that this approach could miss important questions that matter to patients, Selby and Fleurence note, PCORI initiated the second approach, which "directly involves patients and other stakeholders in generating questions that address specific problems identified as having a significant impact on them and the health care system as a whole."   You can link to the complete blog post from the  PCORI Blog on our website.   Tell us what you think of our plans for "getting specific" by posting a comment on the PCORI Blog.   About PCORI The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health care decisions. PCORI is committed to continuously seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. More information is available at www.pcori.org.