#TBT: Making Informed Decisions: What Kinds of Studies Will PCORnet Undertake?

As part of our “Throwback Thursday” blog series, we’re taking a look at a topic that’s currently in the news and tagging it with previous research, videos or commentaries in a relevant way. As the saying goes, “what’s old is new again” – and we hope you enjoy our wonky twist on #TBT.

Last week the Washington Post  reported on a groundbreaking effort to create a giant data repository of medical information—such as vital signs, diagnoses, conditions, test results, surgeries and insurance claims—from more than 26 million Americans. The goal of the project, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), is “to improve the nation’s capacity to conduct comparative effectiveness research (CER) efficiently by creating a large, highly representative network for conducting clinical outcomes research.”

Although there are technical challenges associated with developing and maintaining this repository, “researchers say the potential of the network to speed up research efforts and to answer questions that have long vexed scientists cannot be overstated,” the Post noted. Using PCORnet, established by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), researchers can answer how treatments work in the real-world, in patients and others like you and in real-care settings. The network will allow the conduct of different types of studies, such as pragmatic clinical trials and observational studies, to answer what treatments work best for individuals.

As PCORnet gets underway, the health care community will be hearing a lot more about these different studies, and that’s why we’ve chosen to feature our booklet, Making Informed Decisions: Assessing the Strengths and Weaknesses of Study Designs and Analytic Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research, as our #TBT selection.

To better understand why and when to use certain studies, Making Informed Decisions provides brief descriptions of various types of studies, including pragmatic clinical trials and observational studies, that may be used to address CER study questions like those that may be answered using the new PCORnet. Each study design or analytic topic is explained, along with the strengths and limitations associated with the approach.

Making Informed Decisions is available for download on NPC’s website—we hope you’ll find it to be a useful reference as PCORnet moves forward.

For additional resources about PCORI, check out NPC’s resource guides: The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Resource Guide.