The Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health was selected to join
a newly established network of 13 research centers
organized to evaluate how medications and treatments
perform in the real world.
As part of the new initiative known as Developing
Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness, or
DEcIDE, the Hopkins center will begin working on a study to
evaluate the effectiveness of a new treatment for diabetes,
inhaled insulin.
The DEcIDE network was established by the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality as part of a $15 million
program to improve health services and therapies under the
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization
Act. The DEcIDE network is designed to produce rapid
answers to targeted questions, with results that will be
translated quickly into practice.
"Clinical trials do not always tell us what we need to
know about a medication or treatment. For DEcIDE, we will
look beyond the artificial setting of a clinical trial to
see what has happened in actual practice, to real
patients," said Albert Wu, director of the new Hopkins
center and professor in the
Department of Health Policy and Management at the
Bloomberg School. "With DEcIDE, we will be able to
determine if a treatment is cost-effective or if it leads
to better outcomes. We'll also determine if a medication is
a better choice for a particular group of patients. The
data will help us decide what are the best and the most
effective treatments available."
The DEcIDE center at Johns Hopkins will be a
collaborative effort between the schools of Public Health,
Medicine and Nursing. It will bring together a wealth of
clinical expertise and health services research. Studies
will use de-identified medical records and other data
available from private health insurers and Medicare. The
Johns Hopkins DEcIDE center will have access to data for
millions of patients, including 42 million Medicare
beneficiaries, and information on billions of
prescriptions.
Eric Bass, a professor in the
Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine who
holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health
Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School, will
co-direct the center. "Through these centers, we should be
able to synthesize current knowledge and generate new
knowledge about the comparative effectiveness of different
treatments and clinical practices so that doctors and
policy-makers have access to up-to-date information," Bass
said.