Interest in comparative effectiveness research (CER) has seen a significant rise as healthcare systems around the world have accelerated efforts to reduce costs and improve care.
In November 2009, the Institute partnered with the Center for Medical Technology Policy to hold a symposium of 45 experts and stakeholders to examine opportunities and obstacles to using CER to study integrative medicine.
CER produces evidence that’s substantially more relevant to real-world care than conventional studies, which are conducted in ideal clinical conditions.
“I think this debate is happening throughout all the Western industrialized nations,” said symposium participant George Lewith, professor of health research at University of Southampton in the U.K. “How do we get effective healthcare decision-making without having to investigate every little small element of treatment with a placebo controlled randomized trial?”
The forum marked the Institute’s first step in a wider initiative to advance CER in the field of integrative medicine.
View a roundtable discussion of issues covered at the symposium:
