The Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation and the eHealth Initiative Foundation have launched an 18-month pilot project to test a distributed research network that aims to use electronic health records to study the clinical effectiveness of certain medical treatments, Healthcare IT News reports.
The project, called the Partnership for Connecting Research on Outcomes and Effectiveness, will support research to increase evidence for medical care.
Supporters of the network say it will help determine "what works best" by studying how diseases progress for certain patients, identifying safety problems and comparing the risks and benefits of alternative treatments and comparing different medical practices that might affect cost and quality.
In addition, the pilot project will study the organizational, technical and policy aspects related to using a distributed network to provide physicians and patients with the best information on disease treatments.
The eHealth Initiative Foundation will staff and coordinate the new partnership's activities, and Joseph Kanter, chair of the Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation, will serve as chair of the foundation (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 8/12).