Observational Studies in a Learning Health System: Workshop Summary.
This workshop, Observational Studies in a Learning Health System, was sponsored by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI estimates it will award over $650 million in research funding this upcoming year. I would recommend all grant-seekers working in clinical research review this summary, but it is especially important that researchers seeking PCORI funding understand these issues and integrate these ideas into their research designs.
This summary includes information on “how observational studies can be made to be more rigorous and internally valid, how to deal with bias, the use of observational studies to generalize findings from randomized controlled trials, and how to evaluate treatment heterogeneity.” It would be great to hear about other work on these topics that researchers developing observational studies might find useful. If you have one you would suggest, please leave a comment!
Strategic Grantsmanship 