News from Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Articles
New Brief Highlights How PCORnet® Resources Power Patient-Centered Kidney Research
(4/21, PCORnet Blog) comments “...The brief highlights the utility of PCORnet to support comparative clinical effectiveness research that can help patients make more informed decisions about their healthcare. Reflecting on her experience as the Principal Investigator for Empa DKD, Neha Pagidipati said, ‘We needed a network that could not only capture lab data across a broad enough population to meet our [diabetic kidney disease] DKD participant target, but also allowed us to track long-term outcomes in these patients. PCORnet resources offer the only networked datasets out there that could support this research.’” Full
High-Needs ACOs Form Complex Care Alliance
(4/22, David Raths, Healthcare Innovation) reports “Ten accountable care organizations (ACOs) and several related associations are launching a new Complex Care Alliance focused on improving models of care for the most complex and vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries. Members include participants in the High Needs ACO model and concerned organizations that are advocating for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the CMS Innovation Center to strengthen and continue the model beyond its current expiration date in 2026.” Full
Press Releases
Observational Research Reveals Unintended Consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act on Post-Approval Clinical Trials
(4/22, National Pharmaceutical Council Press Release) “...‘The Inflation Reduction Act and Drug Development: Potential Early Signals of Impact on Post-Approval Clinical Trials’ provides compelling evidence of the IRA's influence on the landscape of industry-sponsored, post-approval clinical trials, with a larger impact on small molecule drugs. The paper is authored by Hanke Zheng, MS, PhD, Julie A. Patterson, PharmD, PhD, and Jon D. Campbell, PhD...‘The IRA introduces new challenges for drug development by shortening the timeline toward price erosion, discouraging investments in vital post-approval research,’ said Dr. Zheng. ‘Our study underscores the need for policymakers to consider the broader implications on innovation and patient access to new therapies, especially as a majority of post-approval drug trials and investment comes from industry rather than government.’” Full
An AI Tool Grounded in Evidence-Based Medicine Outperforms Other AI Tools—and Most Doctors—on USMLE Exams
(4/22, University at Buffalo Press Release) “A powerful clinical artificial intelligence tool developed by University at Buffalo biomedical informatics researchers has demonstrated remarkable accuracy on all three parts of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (Step exams), according to a paper published in JAMA Network Open.” Full
Journals
Recruitment and Retention in a Real-World Comparative Effectiveness Trial to Improve Diabetes Self-Care Behaviors
Satya Surbhi, et al.
April 19, 2025, Contemporary Clinical Trials
The Inflation Reduction Act and Drug Development: Potential Early Signals of Impact on Post-Approval Clinical Trials
Hanke Zheng, Julie A. Patterson & Jonathan D. Campbell
April 22, 2025, Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science
Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science
Semantic Clinical Artificial Intelligence vs Native Large Language Model Performance on the USMLE
Peter L. Elkin, MD; Guresh Mehta, MS; Frank LeHouillier, MS; et al
April 22, 2025, JAMA Network Open