As follow-up to the Symposium on the Evidentiary Framework for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, the Institute hosted a three-week virtual forum to continue the dialogue about using comparative effectiveness research (CER) to generate more useful evidence for integrative medicine.
Researchers and clinicians, public health experts, policy makers, payers and the public discussed these key issues: Stakeholder needs
- When making healthcare decisions, what information do we need?
- What outcomes matter to us and therefore should be measured?
- How can we get high-quality CER to support the needs of all stakeholders?
- If commonly used research methods don’t yield the information we need, what innovative research designs can?
- If these new methods are considered less ‘rigorous’ than randomized controlled trials, is it possible to achieve both rigor and relevance in clinical research?
- How can we balance the internal validity and the practical application of clinical research?
- What do we know about the cost-effectiveness of the complementary and integrative approach to healthcare?
- How can CER be used to help us understand the potential of integrative medicine to lower the national healthcare bill?
- Can CER give complementary and integrative medicine a place in the coverage and reimbursement system?