INTRODUCTION There is a need to develop new, more cost-effective models of healthcare and in this vein there is a considerable international interest in exploiting the potential offered by major developments in health information technologies (HITs). Very substantial investments are, as a result, now being made globally, but these still probably only represent a fraction of the investments need...

BACKGROUND Immunization against influenza is considered an essential public health intervention to control both seasonal epidemics and pandemic influenza. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are five key policy and three key programmatic issues that decision-makers should consider before introducing a vaccine. These are (a) public health priority, (b) disease burden, (c) eff...

The following are highlights from the new series, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes Topic Review. This series will summarize the most important manuscripts (as selected by the Editor) that have published in the Circulation portfolio. The objective of this new series is to provide our readership with a timely, comprehensive selection of important papers that are relevant to the qu...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES For eligible candidates, transplantation is considered the optimal treatment compared with dialysis for patients with ESRD. The growing number of patients with ESRD requires new strategies to increase the pool of potential donors. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Using decision analysis modeling, this study compared a strategy of paying living kidney don...

This study extends nutritional intervention results reported by short-term clinical trials of a diabetes-specific nutritional meal replacement by assessing the ten-year impact of the interventions on patient outcomes and costs compared to usual care. We developed and validated a computer simulation of type 2 diabetes based on published data from major clinical trials. The model tracks patients ...

BACKGROUND Clozapine is currently restricted to patients who have failed at least two trials of other antipsychotic medications because of concerns that its use as a first-line agent would lead to greater mortality, mainly through agranulocytosis. AIMS OF THE STUDY We sought to determine the cost-effectiveness of allowing clozapine to be a first-line treatment versus the current policy of res...

BACKGROUND Population-based BRCA1/BRCA2 testing has been found to be cost-effective compared with family history-based testing in Ashkenazi-Jewish women were >30 years old with 4 Ashkenazi-Jewish grandparents. However, individuals may have 1, 2, or 3 Ashkenazi-Jewish grandparents, and cost-effectiveness data are lacking at these lower BRCA prevalence estimates. We present an updated cost-effect...

BACKGROUND The absence of trial evidence makes it impossible to determine whether or not mass screening for lung cancer would be cost effective and, indeed, whether a clinical trial to investigate the problem would be justified. Attempts have been made to resolve this issue by modelling, although the complex models developed to date have required more real-world data than are currently availabl...

Measuring is a key to scientific progress. This is particularly true for research concerning complex systems, whether natural or human-built. Multilingual and multimedia information systems are increasingly complex: they need to satisfy diverse user needs and support challenging tasks. Their development calls for proper evaluation methodologies to ensure that they meet the expected user require...

BACKGROUND Comparative effectiveness research (CER) has been proposed in the United States as a way to compare new drugs and technologies with established alternatives and determine not just whether a therapy works, but how well it works compared to other options. OBJECTIVES To define the current use of CER in the development of new drugs and technologies and explore what is needed for this r...