HealthCore Working with Primary Care Physicians in New Study

HealthCore Working with Primary Care Physicians to Participate in Real-World EvidenceHealthCore is reaching out to primary care physicians—especially those involved in patient-centered medical homes—to gain their participation in real-world research to add to the existing body of evidence on marketed drugs and devices and benefit design, and assist governments, companies, policy makers and health plans in making better healthcare decisions.“In the past, decision-makers have been challenged in obtaining applicable outcomes information, because of the unrealistic environment used in controlled clinical trials and the optimistic magnitude of findings derived as a result of that environment,” said Mark Cziraky, HealthCore’s vice president of research and development operations. “We take information on how drugs and medical devices are used in the real world to follow patients over extended time periods and to integrate prospective, observational insights with retrospective data.”The result of this research is realistic, actionable information that can be used by physicians in combination with data generated from randomized clinical trials.For example, a study with physician participation published several years ago in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that the pill form of an asthma controller was more effective than recommended first line long-term inhaler therapy for asthma–especially for children–and led to reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations. The key to the study was that this was true only for those non-compliant on their medications—which represented the vast majority of those taking asthma medications and explained why the outcomes would be different than those experienced by clinical trial populations where participants are required to be compliant with their medications to continue to participate in the trial.Those interested in participating in HealthCore studies should e-mail irn@healthcore.com for more information on how to enroll in the IRN®, HealthCore’s Integrated Research Network, consisting of thousands of physicians nationwide.“Not only do physicians get the opportunity to contribute data to studies to help answer key questions about everything from treatments for chronic disease to acute care, they also will be compensated for their time and efforts to report information they may already be collecting as part of their daily practice,” Cziraky said.