INCREASE PATIENT SAFETY

ccording to the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Web site, comparative effec-tiveness research (CER) “identifies what works best for which patients under what circumstances.”1 In a recent article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Sox and Greenfield2 describe the concept in more detail: CER is the generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor a clinical condition, or to improve the delivery of care. The purpose of CER is to assist consumers, clinicians, pur-chasers, and policy makers to make informed decisions that will improve health care at both the individual and population levels. Ideally, CER will provide useful practice data beyond the scope of information generated by a typical 2-arm randomized intervention vs placebo study