To the Editor: In their Commentary, Drs Dreyer and Garner1 extolled the virtues of real-time data from patient registries as an important supplement to data derived from clinical trials. They advocated for methodological research to increase understanding of what constitutes quality and a more directed effort to evaluate the strengths and limitations of different types of evidence. However, they did not acknowledge powerful predictive modeling tools that are available to transform real-time data into evidence defining optimal care.
The Archimedes model, for example, is a versatile and powerful mathematical model enabling prediction of clinical outcomes based on signs and symptoms of disease, patient demographics, laboratory data, and even physiologic variables. It can provide cost estimates for various care management options to optimize cost-effectiveness ratios. A work in progress, the model has been rigorously validated for diabetes.2 - 3 Such a virtual health care system could be used not only to plan optimal therapy for individual patients but also to create practice guidelines for populations of patients.
Patient registries, as well as clinical trial data and other public and private data sets, represent valuable sources of input to enable mathematical models to define what constitutes highest quality care at affordable cost.
Financial Disclosures: None reported.
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
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