Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients (BMJ 1996; 312: 71-2). The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. By best available external clinical evidence we mean clinically relevant research, often from the basic sciences of medicine, but especially from patient centered clinical research into the accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests (including the clinical examination), the power of prognostic markers, and the safety and efficacy of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive regimens. The emergence of both new clinical measurements as well as epidemiological techniques to analyze these interventions forms the basis to test the validity of previously accepted diagnostic tests and treatments and from time-to-time replaces them with new ones that are more powerful, more accurate, more efficacious, and safer.
MTPPI has examined the impediments to using evidence-based information by studying:
- Influence of the NIH Consensus Conference on H. Pylori on Physician Prescribing;
- Decentralization and Fragmentation of Health Technology Assessment Activities in the U.S. Compared to Other Countries;
- Secular Trends in the Erythropoietin therapy in the U.S. Hemodialysis Population;
- Use of Clinical Practice Guidelines in the Treatment of Anemia
Recent publications prepared by the Institute in this field are: