US big-data health network launches aspirin study
From the article:
One of the largest big-data experiments in health care has set its first research target. The leaders of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in Washington DC voted on 29 July to focus the institute’s first clinical trial on the use of aspirin to prevent heart disease. [...]
To avoid similar pitfalls, PCORI says that patient representatives will help to review its grant applications and work with investigators on trials. But simplifying scientific concepts for non-specialists can be hard, says Glenn Cohen, a bioethicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It has a certain public spirit, but expecting patients to be involved raises challenges when these policy questions have a technical underlying element,” he says. Selby says that PCORI plans to work out ways to deal with such issues over the next year.
To ensure privacy, PCORnet will not collect personal data. Patients’ records will be kept by their health-care providers. When outside researchers use PCORnet for studies, the relevant data can be analysed within the network and the results sent to the researcher, or anonymized and provided in raw form. [...]
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bioethics health law policy human subjects research i. glenn cohen pharmaceuticals public health