In this PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA), PCORI aims to fund studies that address high-priority methodological gaps in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER).

PCORI seeks to fund projects that address important methodological gaps and lead to improvements in the strength and quality of evidence generated by PCOR/CER studies.

For the Cycle 3 2020 Methods PFA, PCORI has identified the following Research Areas of Interest (RAIs) as programmatic priorities:

• Methods Related to Ethical and Human Subjects Protections Issues in PCOR/CER
• Methods to Improve Study Design
• Methods to Support Data Research Networks
• Methods to Improve the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Clinical Research (NEW)

The RAI for artificial intelligence and machine learning replaces the RAI for “Methods to Improve the Use of Natural Language Processing (NLP).” This change signals PCORI’s broader interest in funding methodological research that seeks to improve how massive amounts of data from a variety of sources can be: (1) appropriately analyzed and integrated into clinical care and health care delivery systems, and (2) facilitate population health models and social determinants of health (SDoH) analyses. Proposals should address mechanisms seeking to improve equitable, inclusive data collection and aggregation.