The Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute Wins Contract to Implement Causal Inference Methods

    BETHESDA, MD, June 23, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute (MTPPI) announces that it has been awarded a contract from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to implement Causal Inference research technologies at four of the nation's leading healthcare research institutions. Implementation sites include Nationwide Children's Hospital/The Ohio State University, University of Utah School of Medicine, UConn Health, and University of Florida Health.

The project, titled Enhancing Dissemination and Implementation of Causal Inference Methods through Partnerships with Large Health Systems, aims to increase access, adoption, and sustainability of Causal Inference methods. The specific methods being implemented under this contract are Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) and the g-formula, which will be used to investigate eleven CER projects spanning the four sites.

This contract furthers the work completed under an earlier MTPPI pilot project that was funded by PCORI in which investigators compared the g-formula method with IPW to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of using these methods to study dynamic treatments.

"We anticipate that this collaboration will expand our ability to apply advanced causal inference methods to the field of health disparities," said Dr. Judith Fifield, Professor in Family Medicine at the UConn School of Medicine and Director of the UConn Health Disparities Institute.

Through this project, the new analytic techniques will be applied to the following clinical areas: pediatric triage of major trauma, pain relief medication use, spinal cord and traumatic brain injury, community-onset pneumonia, rheumatoid arthritis progression, and health disparities in maternal and child health.

Dr. Huiyun Xiang, Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and the Director of the Center for Pediatric Trauma Research at Nationwide Children's Hospital, gave context to the initiative, stating "This is a unique scientific area where causal inference using observational data is getting momentum and causal methods have a fertile ground to grow in the near future."

About The Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute (MTPPI): MTPPI was established in 1986 to conduct research on the clinical and economic implications of healthcare technologies. MTPPI's research is directed toward the formulation and implementation of local and national healthcare policies. With extensive investigator experience in both the public and private sectors, MTPPI's staff designs, implements, and conducts a full range of health services research activities. MTPPI is organized as a non-profit 501c3 corporation. Visit mtppi.org to learn more.

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