Faculty and trainees at the CHOICE Institute regularly conduct research that aims to inform the national health care and pharmaceutical policy debate with rigorous, evidence-based analyses. Faculty have nationally-recognized expertise in a wide range of quantitative methods, including decision modeling, policy evaluation, health economics, and statistics, that they bring to bear on important and timely health policy questions.
Research at the Institute has three main emphases:
1) Health Economics. The CHOICE researchers are at the forefront of establishing the economic and social impact of innovations in health care. Building over two decades of work, research in health economics at the CHOICE span topics such as estimating the value of individualized medical care, simulating the policy implications of using genomic information in healthcare, price elasticities under value-based drug formulary, prioritizing research investments in health care, economic evaluations, and evaluating various market forces impacting drug pricing in the US.
2) Outcomes Research. Outcomes research has been part of the core research agenda for the CHOICE faculty and is an overarching theme that includes areas such as drug surveillance, pharmacoepidemiology, health outcomes measurement, evidence synthesis and statistical methods development. Research in these areas span topics including pharmaceutical risk-benefit tradeoffs, stakeholder-driven meta-analysis, effects of opioid abuse, medication adherence, forecasting biomarkers in oncology and development of causal inference methods that accounts for behavioral responses to information.
3) Policy Evaluations. The CHOICE faculty has been engaged in comparative evaluations of many interventions, treatments, formulary policies and national health care policies. Topics span cost-effectiveness analysis to inform value discussions in the United States, VBID evaluations, comparative effectiveness of bariatric surgeries, evaluation of introductions of national and state level policies such as Medicare Part D program, Massachusetts health reform, ACA, oral parity laws, Health IT systems and marijuana laws.
Programmatic Focuses
Specific areas of excellence that cut across these emphases are developed through programmatic focuses:
Program in Health Economics and Outcomes Research Methodologies (PHEnOM)
Current Research Projects
- Costs and buRdens of Illnesses from a Societal Perspective (CrISP) Portfolio
- Model For Economic Analysis of Sickle Cell Cure (Measure)
- Personalized Risk-Adaptive Surveillance Strategies in Cancer (PRAISE)
- Personalized Medicine Economics Research (PriMER)
- Pharmacogenomics Clinical Support Economic Value (PRECISE-Value)
- Value of Information for Cardiovascular Trials and Other Comparative Research (VICTOR)
- Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER)
- Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center (PNW EPC)
- Real-world Evidence Assessments and Needs Guidance (REAdi) Tool