WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today announced $40 million in awards over five years to 11 institutions to support the training of researchers to conduct patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) within learning health systems (LHS).

Organizations that apply LHS principles aim to improve patient care and health system operations through the systematic generation, adoption and application of evidence. Clinicians and health system leaders work together to ensure that evidence is updated, disseminated to clinical teams and communicated to patients in ways that support shared decision making. Learning health systems are essential as the health care landscape becomes increasingly characterized by rich sources of information that are available in digital formats, programs and applications.

The new LHS Centers of Excellence funded under this initiative will produce the next generation of LHS researchers to conduct PCOR and implement the results to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. Newly trained clinician and research scientists will work within health systems by collaborating with systems’ leaders and conducting studies to address how healthcare organizations can improve patient outcomes.

PCORI and AHRQ announced their collaboration on research to support the training of clinician and research scientists to conduct PCOR within learning health systems. The five-year, $40 million initiative to fund the training of clinician and research scientists will be managed by AHRQ and jointly funded by AHRQ and PCORI.

“Learning health systems aim to improve patient care through the use of real-time data and analytics,” said AHRQ Director Gopal Khanna, MBA. “AHRQ is proud to collaborate with PCORI to develop a healthcare workforce trained to conduct research within a learning health system.”

“The researchers supported by this initiative will support efforts to bring healthcare systems, clinicians and patients fully into the process of developing the data needed to better support personalized medical decision-making,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. “The ultimate goal for PCORI and AHRQ is to bring rigorous science to produce generalizable evidence that improves the quality of care and the health of individuals, both within and beyond these centers of excellence. These awards will help to grow the number of researchers with the knowledge and skill to learn from the real world practice going on within their delivery systems and the real world data being generated in ever-increasing quantity.”

The LHS Centers of Excellence are:

• A Chicago Center of Excellence in Learning Health Systems Research Training (ACCELERAT)
  Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.
• CATALyST: Consortium for Applied Training to Advance the Learning Health System with Scholars/Trainees
  Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, Wash.
• Learning Health System Scholar Program at Vanderbilt
  Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
• Learning Health System (LITI- PCORLHS)
  Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Ind.
• Leveraging Infrastructure to Train Investigators in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research in the Minnesota Learning Health System Mentored Career Development Program (MN-LHS)
  University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
• NW Center of Excellence & K12 in Patient Centered Learning Health Systems Science
  Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Ore.
• PEDSnet Scholars: A Training Program for Pediatric Learning Health System Researchers
  Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.
• Stakeholder-Partnered Implementation Research and Innovation Translation (SPIRIT) program
  University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
• The Center of Excellence in Promoting LHS Operations and Research at Einstein/Montefiore (EXPLORE)
  Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y.
• Transforming the Generation and Adoption of PCOR into Practice (T-GAPP)
  University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
• UCSF Learning Health System K12 Career Development Program
  University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif.

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About AHRQ

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead federal agency charged with improving the safety and quality of America's health care system. AHRQ develops the knowledge, tools, and data needed to improve the health care system and help Americans, health care professionals, and policymakers make informed health decisions.

About PCORI

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information they need to make better-informed healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to continuously seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.