The Division of Clinical Decision Making participates in research across Tufts Medical Center, including clinical decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, patient preference or utility assessment for quality of life, literature synthesis and meta-analysis, clinical cognition (how doctors think) and medical informatics.
By incorporating the patient's perspective and their health preferences and goals, clinical decision analysis instantiates patient-centered outcome research by explicitly examining the choices (alternative treatments or tests), the chances (the uncertainty of harmful or beneficial outcomes) and the consequences (the health outcomes or prognosis personalized for the patient's values) and determining the optimal strategy and the circumstances under which an alternative might be preferable.
At the health policy level including the NIH, CDC, AHRQ, ACP, AMA, IOM and WHO, it has been involved with technology assessment, guideline development, health outcome analysis, consensus conferences, expert panels, clinical informatics, clinical decision support, quality of care assessment, performance measures, decisision aids, shared decision making, theory of constraints, and telemedicine. Division members have participated in translating evidence into quality improvement and quality performance measures for consideration and adoption by the National Quality Forum.