Medical care is delivered one patient at a time, but the evidence for practicing is derived by aggregating many patients—typically thousands or tens of thousands of patients—into groups. This group-derived evidence would be highly informative for medical practice if all patients were identical. The dissimilarity of individual patients, however, potentially undermines clinical research as a scientific basis for the practice of medicine.
The Predictive Analytics and Comparative Effectiveness Center (PACE), led by Dr. David Kent, seeks to understand better and address the limitations of using group-derived evidence as the basis for decision-making in individual patients. Our approach is based on the close integration of clinical and statistical reasoning. We aim to provide clinicians and patients with evidence better tailored to their particular circumstances; we have expertise in clinical medicine, risk modeling, individual patient meta-analysis, and observational comparative effectiveness studies.
The PACE Center provides clinicians and patients with evidence better tailored to their particular circumstances through risk modeling. Among other projects, Dr. Kent is the Principal Investigator of several federally-funded research grants related to these issues, including several methods grants from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) focused on cerebrovascular disease. Dr. Kent works with five additional faculty investigators and statisticians.
