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Individualization of Treatment and Comparative Effectiveness Research

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Comparative Effectiveness Research in Health Services

Part of the book series: Health Services Research ((HEALTHSR))

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Abstract

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) comprises of the generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care. Its purpose is to assist consumers, clinicians, purchasers, and policymakers to make informed decisions that will improve healthcare at both the individual and population levels. The agenda for CER is very ambitious considering its limited resources and the starkly different informational requirements of the various decision-makers. How results emanating from a single or a few CER studies can inform all levels of decision-making remains the biggest challenge in the designs of CER studies.

This chapter discusses the role of CER in generating individualized information on the value of medical products and how such information has the potential for improving decision-making at all levels. In practice, this notion of generating individualized information and using it to deliver care is denoted as personalized medicine (PM), which allows for the possibility of variation in medical quality based on demographics, comorbidities, preferences, genomics, and even environmental contexts within which care is delivered. However, traditionally, CER and PM are thought to be disparate research strategies. Recognizing that this distinction may be artificial and created by silos in research practices, this chapter discusses some of the key behavioral and economic issues that encourage the adoption of PM in practice and how the current infrastructure for CER studies can be leveraged to evaluate PM and also foster innovation in PM. Indeed, the fields of CER and PM appear to be morphing into the single paradigm of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) (also denoted as precision medicine). The chapter ends with discussing some of the tools available in order to prioritize PM research in a prospective manner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program, Deapartment of Pharmacy and the Departments of Health Services and Economics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Anirban Basu

  2. The National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Anirban Basu

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  1. Anirban Basu
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Correspondence to Anirban Basu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dalhousie University, Community Health & Epidemiology, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Adrian Levy

  2. School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Boris Sobolev

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Basu, A. (2016). Individualization of Treatment and Comparative Effectiveness Research. In: Levy, A., Sobolev, B. (eds) Comparative Effectiveness Research in Health Services. Health Services Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7600-0_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7600-0_15

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