Innovative Models of Use of Health IT for Comparative Effectiveness Research for the reduction of Health Disparities

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI's mission is to support the production of well-validated scientific evidence to assist in making informed decisions on healthcare treatments. PCORI will identify and refine methodological standards for different types of CER study designs, such as pragmatic clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, and patient registries.  The use of Health IT is a key enabler of comparative effectiveness research (CER) especially in creation and maintenance of patient registries. In addition, emerging Health IT applications that leverage the user-friendly platforms of tablets, smart phones, medical devices, mobile, and social media provide for the real-time collection, analysis, and utilization of relevant data sets not traditionally found in medical records. For appropriate and robust CER to be conducted that yields productive insights into the factors that create and sustain health disparities, clinical data from Electronic Medical records (EMRs) must be aggregated with patient-specific data that adequately characterizes the social network, behavioral preferences, and economic context in which these disparities occur. This will compare patient outcomes from a variety of treatments, but also in serving as a primary or ancillary component in the engagement of patients as co-participants in the delivery of effective care interventions. One method of evaluating the effectiveness of CER is an Integrated Evidence Rating analysis as a means to rate clinical effectiveness and comparative value. Patient generated data from the community can add substantial value to existing clinical data in EMR systems that can be used to support and extend observational and clinical trial research. Enabling greater access to data from all sources and improving the data's breadth, depth, and utility will help physicians better treat patients especially form diverse patient populations including the reduction of health disparities from rural and urban areas.