Joe Selby, MD, MPH, executive director of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), discusses the promise of PCORI’s research efforts in a recent guest blog post for healthcare policy journal Health Affairs. In his post, Selby explains that PCORI’s mandate is not just to fund comparative effectiveness research (CER) studies that compare multiple therapeutic options, but also to share the results in ways that are meaningful to patients, physicians, and other stakeholders.

Although many of PCORI’s resources are dedicated to supporting CER in real-world settings, patient engagement in research is also a cornerstone of PCORI’s efforts. Of the $464 million invested, 62% has been focused on CER, with the rest spread across infrastructure (18%), methods (11%) and communication and dissemination research (8%). PCORI expects to commit $1 billion over the next 2 years to expand their work. As part of their mission, they also hope to improve research methods and build the national capacity for CER.