BACKGROUND Patients and clinicians expect patient decision aids to be based on the best available research evidence. Since 2005, this expectation has translated into a quality dimension of the International Patient Decision Aid Standards. METHODS We reviewed the 2005 standards and the available literature on the evidence base of decision aids as well as searched for parallel activities in whi...

Evidence-based medicine integrates clinical experience with patients’ values and the best available evidence. In the past, clinicians took responsibility not only for being well informed about the benefits and harms of medical options but also for judging their value in the best interests of the patients. More recently, a shared decision making approach has been advocated in which patients are ...

Access to medicines is usually given under the regulatory approvals and subsequent coverage decisions, after efficacy and safety have been proven by clinical trials. Recently, systems to enable exceptional early access* have been explored to meet significant, unmet, and urgent medical needs for frontier medicines. In Japan, the Advanced Medical Care B system (AMC-B) is already in operation. Two...

The quality and cost of medical care is determined in large part by the decisions that clinicians and patients make every day about seeking care, having tests, starting treatments, and stopping treatments. There are situations in medicine in which a treatment or approach has considerable evidence of significant benefit with minimal or no harm. High-quality decisions in these situations are abou...

A systematic review of the language and communication characteristics of communication aids considered in identifying the appropriate aid for a child is introduced. The aim is to improve the decision-making around the provision of symbol communication aids to children.

know about the risks of the procedure. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Jurors in states with the reasonablepatient standard can ask themselves, “Would I have wanted to know about this risk?” “Would it have affected my decision making?” Drs Drolet and Brower also express concerns about operationalizing the reasonable-patient standard. They argue that each patient’s informational needs are un...

BACKGROUND Decision aids are often advocated as a means to assist patient and health care provider decision making when faced with complicated treatment or screening decisions. Despite an exponential growth in the availability of decision aids in recent years, their impact on long-term treatment decisions and patient adherence is uncertain due to a paucity of rigorous studies. The choice of ant...

BACKGROUND Much of the research on decision-making in health care has focused on consultation outcomes. Less is known about the process by which clinicians and patients come to a treatment decision. This study aimed to quantitatively describe the behaviour shown by doctors and patients during primary care consultations when three types of decision aids were used to promote treatment decision-ma...

History has shown that inaccurate assessments of credibility can result in tremendous costs to businesses and society. This study uses Signal Detection Theory (SDT) to improve the accuracy of credibility assessments through combining automated and participatory decision support. Participatory decision support is also proposed to encourage acceptance of the decision aid’s recommendation. A new h...