Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research

Scope

Healthcare is at a turning point. We have entered a new era of high patient expectations, aging populations and socioeconomic constraints. At the same time, attention is focusing more closely on personalized/precision medicine approaches to healthcare delivery, and healthcare options, especially in fields such as oncology, are proliferating. The use of real-world evidence and big data offers the potential to harness vast amounts of medical data, but also brings significant methodological, legal and ethical challenges. There is now a pressing need to make direct comparisons between the available healthcare options and interventions in order to address uncertainties in optimal clinical practice. In this new environment, the goal of patient-centered outcomes research and comparative effectiveness research (CER) is to assist patients, physicians, purchasers, and policy makers to choose between the available options in order to improve healthcare delivery at the level of the individual and on a population scale. The underlying question in undertaking comparative effectiveness research is – which treatment will work best, in which patient, and under what circumstances? Against this backdrop, the peer-reviewed Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research (ISSN: 2042-6305) provides a rapid-publication platform for debate, and for the presentation of new findings and research methodologies.