New Prostate Cancer study website

Last week we created a new dedicated website for our prostate cancer research project: www.mcdm-med.com.

The site describes two of the studies that are now open: our internet trial of a decision dashboard vs a decision table for men with newly diagnosed low risk prostate cancer & our new prostate cancer survivor’s study.

The survivor’s study is a survey that asks men with a history of prostate cancer (regardless of stage or time of initial diagnosis) to review and comment on our current decision dashboard. It is also open to spouses and other close family members.

I invite you to check it out and spread the word to anyone who you think may be interested.

ISPOR 2016

I recently moderated a session entitled ” MCDA, a new paradigm in healthcare decision making? Current status,challenges and opportunities” at the recent ISPOR meeting in Washington, DC. I am grateful to Mireille Goetghebeur for organizing the session and inviting me to participate and greatly appreciate the chance to work with the other two panel members, Kevin Marsh and Mabel Moreno. 

My part was easy – I introduced MCDA and basically followed the outline provided by the first ISPOR task force on MCDA:

Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis for Health Care Decision Making—An Introduction: Report 1 of the ISPOR MCDA Emerging Good Practices Task Force
Thokaka P, Devlin, N, Marsh K, et al. Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis for Health Care Decision Making—An Introduction: Report 1 of the ISPOR MCDA Emerging Good Practices Task Force. Value Health 2016;19:1-13.

Kevin tried valiantly to criticize the use of MCDA and mostly  focused on problems that can happen when you apply it incorrectly except for the meta-question of how do you which MCDA method to use for a particular project. Mireille described the ethical and practical argument for adopting a MCDA approach to important healthcare decisions and Mabel described how it has been used in Colombia to set health policy.

The session was well-received and I think went well. Overall I was impressed by the amount of interest in MCDA that permeated the meeting and suspect it will be a topic that will continue to attract of lot of interest, applications, and new users over the coming years.