April 18, 2019: New Commentary Highlights Value of Pragmatic Trials for Learning Health Systems

In an eGEMs commentary published this month, Leah Tuzzio and Dr. Eric Larson of the NIH Collaboratory’s Health Care Systems Interactions Core discuss the value and impact of embedded pragmatic clinical trials for learning health systems.

Pragmatic trials embedded in healthcare systems are designed to align with the care delivery goals of the health system to produce better health outcomes. The commentary highlights the NIH Collaboratory’s pragmatic trials as “the best-case examples to learn about the challenges of conducting research and of dissemination, implementation and sustainability of research results in real-world settings.”

Designing and implementing an embedded pragmatic clinical trial “requires a bidirectional flow of information and cooperative problem solving between investigator teams and clinical teams,” an important feature of learning health systems. In implementing the trial, the clinical and research teams not only generate useful data, but also demonstrate how the trial results can be incorporated into evidence-based clinical practice.

The commentary is part of a special collection of eGEMs articles commemorating 25 years of the Health Care Systems Research Network.

eGEMs is AcademyHealth’s peer-reviewed, open-access journal for electronic health data and methods. At AcademyHealth’s 2019 Annual Research Meeting in Washington, DC, the NIH Collaboratory will offer a full-day pre-conference seminar on the essentials of embedded pragmatic clinical trials. Registration for the seminar is open now.