Ushering in a New Era of Medical Decision-Making
Policy-makers, physicians, and others have struggled to better understand the consequences of medical treatment options on both the cost and quality of health care. The Archimedes model helps health professionals, policy-makers, pharmaceutical companies, and researchers design simulated clinical trials to better understand the implications of care decisions to both advance treatments for such things as heart disease and strokes, and curb unnecessary health care spending. One analysis using this model triggered a new treatment that led to a more than 60 percent reduction in heart attacks and strokes among Kaiser Permanente members.
To give public policy-makers and nonprofits access to this high-powered mathematical modeling tool, RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio funded the development of the Archimedes Healthcare Simulator (ARCHeS) in 2007 to usher in a new era of medical decision-making. ARCHeS is a web-based interface tool that can provide quick analyses of health policy questions and comparisons of different treatment scenarios and outcomes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently contracted with Archimedes for access to ARCHeS to permit agencies across the department to analyze health spending, treatment, and effectiveness. Other organizations and agencies at the federal and state level, as well as private health plans, are beginning to follow suit, signaling a major step toward using mathematical modeling to transform health and health care for all Americans.
Archimedes is partnering with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to develop a new measurement tool that focuses on improving the health outcomes of patients with heart disease and diabetes. NCQA will evaluate The Global Cardiovascular Risk (GCVR) score under a grant from RWJF.
In a sign of the mounting interest in the power of mathematical modeling to guide health policy decisions, Health Affairs featured three articles on Archimedes, a Pioneer grantee that uses advanced mathematics, computing, and data systems to analyze policy questions and compare treatments, outcomes, and costs.
Using the Archimedes Model, researchers found that just hitting benchmarks for better quality under the Medicare Shared Savings Program would produce only modest savings for participating accountable care organizations (ACOs). ACOs will have to lower costs by other means, such as through improved use of information technology and care coordination.
Current methods for measuring quality—which focus on processes and treatment goals—reveal little about the outcomes patients actually experience. The Global Outcomes (GO) Score, supported by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, is an outcomes-based measure that can be used to assess the potential effectiveness of different interventions, such as prevention activities, tests, and treatments.
Read MoreBy using the ARCHeS solution to complement their own experiences and insights, health care decision-makers are better equipped to answer important policy questions and inform policy decisions…”
- Patrick van der Valk, member of the Archimedes team on Pioneering Ideas blog
Eddy’s work in modeling and evidence-based medicine has undoubtedly changed the face of medical decision making..."
- “People & Places” profile of David Eddy in Health Affairs
ARCHeS is the first in a series of applications that will give researchers and decision-makers ever-increasing access to the Archimedes Model via Software as a Service (SAAS). SAAS users can run their own health care simulations using a comprehensive web interface with intuitive editors for setting up multi-scenario studies, specifying: populations, background care, conditions, standard or custom interventions, care processes, and treatments.
The Global Cardiovascular Risk score, a “next generation” quality improvement tool, is being co-developed by NCQA and Archimedes, Inc.
Via the Internet, ARCHeS will dramatically expand access to Archimedes, a powerful medical outcomes predictive model.
Read MoreDepartment of Health and Human Services agencies can now use the ARCHeS tool to conduct large-scale analyses to evaluate health spending, treatment, and effectiveness.
Read More... In American Medical News: "Quality gains alone won’t generate ACO bonuses"
...On FierceHealthIT.com: "HHS moves to mathematical modeling for research, intervention evaluation"
...On HealthcareITNews.com: "HHS taps Archimedes for high-powered analytics"
...In Government Health IT: "HHS awards Archimedes health data analytics contract"
