IOM Guides Comparative Effectiveness Agenda

At the request of Congress, the Institute of Medicine has released a list of 100 research priorities that will drive the comparative effectiveness agenda mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a the Stimulus bill).

The priorities include treatment of back pain and obesity, prevention of falls in the elderly, and improving the process by which results of new medical research are disseminated to physicians and the lay public. The full list can be found here.

Congress allocated $1.1 billion of its $787 billion Economic Hail Mary to comparative effectiveness research on the assumption that it will improve the quality and reduce the cost of health care.

This "is a program about improving decisions for patients," Harold Sox told the Wall Street Journal. Sox co-chaired the IOM committee that established the list.

Sox’ team distilled the final 100 from a list of 2,600 suggestions that were submitted by professional groups, policy types and the public.

Although the products of Big Pharma and the medical device companies will be the focus of much of the research, the former managed to contribute only 17 suggestions while the latter came up with 11. "For whatever reason, we didn't get many suggestions from them," Sox said.

"Right now, the winners and losers (among the various drugs and devices in extant) are based on which company has the best marketing department, rather than who has the best product," U of P professor Brian Strom commented to the Journal.

"If we show that in certain drugs, the more expensive one is better than the cheaper one, the answer is use the expensive one," added Strom. "The focus of comparative effectiveness research is that it leads to better care, not cheaper care."

Glenn Laffel MD, PhD, Sr. VP Clinical Affairs