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Demystifying Comparative Effectiveness Research: A Case Study Learning Guide
From the National Pharmaceutical Council March 2010
With more than 18,000 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published each year, it’s challenging for patients and health care providers to figure out what information is valid or most relevant to them. A new tool published by the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) is now available to help by offering a series of easy-to-use “checklists” to evaluate RCTs and other types of comparative effectiveness research (CER).
“There’s so much written about CER, but very little written about how to properly evaluate a CER analysis. This study will help health care providers, patients and the media better understand what to look for so they can be better informed,” said NPC President Dan Leonard.
The study, Demystifying Comparative Effectiveness Research: A Case Study Learning Guide, written by Robert W. Dubois, MD, PhD, chief medical officer of Cerner LifeSciences, and Sylvia L. Kindermann, MPH, Cerner LifeSciences senior research associate, outlines the basic steps involved in evaluating the three main types of CER:
- Randomized controlled trials, wherein subjects in a population are randomly allocated into study and control groups to receive or not to receive an experimental intervention, such as a new therapeutic biopharmaceutical or medical device;
- Meta-analysis, which synthesizes data across a series of similar studies, generally RCTs; and,
- Observational studies, which follow participants over a period of time to examine the potential associations between patients’ exposure to treatment and health outcomes.
The report details a guide on how to best evaluate each kind of study, and it discusses case studies in each of the three types of CER.
“If conducted and interpreted correctly, these types of research can help to inform health care decision-making. If, however, such studies are conducted or interpreted incorrectly, the comparative answers from these studies may be inaccurate, or worse, misleading,” the study authors wrote.
The complete report and an executive summary are available as PDFs on NPC’s website at www.npcnow.org. Print versions can be ordered from NPC by contacting Gail Durrer at 703-620-6390 or gdurrer@npcnow.org.
If your organization is interested in co-branding the report with your organization’s logo and information, please contact Andrea Hofelich at 703-715-2741 or ahofelich@npcnow.org.
